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A review by ps_stillreading
Dark Hours by Conchitina R. Cruz
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
5.0
If I were to describe this poetry collection with one word, that would be “haunting.”
The experience of reading Dark Hours by Conchitina Cruz reminded me of 2 am thoughts. When you’re up really late, the world around you is quiet, and you only have your thoughts and your past to keep you company. This is the time you allow yourself to be vulnerable. These are the moments when you allow yourself to ruminate and remember. Alone, you embrace everything that haunts you.
On the surface, the poems in Dark Hours are about the city. About life in the city, how the city can be a place of refuge but also make you feel so lonely. There is a certain thrill about anonymity within a crowd. But take it too far and you begin to see what isn’t there. Who isn’t there. In between the lines, there is this powerful sense of longing. Of missing someone. Of being painfully aware that there is a missing piece.
I never imagined that a poem about rain and flooded streets could make me so emotional. But that is exactly the reaction I had on reading Dear City, the first poem in the collection. Right away, I am asked to shift my perspective. Rain is good, and it is the poorly built city that makes a villain out of rain. This poem also brought me back to my college days, of joking that we are waterproof just because our classes are the last to get suspended when storms come. Forced to walk in floodwaters to get to class, cursing the rain that transforms the street into a filthy river, and lamenting our wet feet. But in the spirit of reframing this in my mind…I guess the city floods forced me to be mindful, to actually be aware of the city I move in. Where I would normally walk quickly without a thought, I had to slow down. Observe. Find the least flooded path. Tread carefully so I don’t slip. Sometimes the rain makes you reconnect with your surroundings, grounding you in the present, in the city you have a love-hate relationship with. Am I overthinking this? Or is it just that poetry is meant to inspire us to think deeper, to feel more?
With a title like Dark Hours, it is no surprise that there are some dark subject matter in these poems. Death, violence, grief, loss, and an abundance of nostalgia are present throughout the collection. The characters in each poem carry with them their histories. Their stories are explorations of people and places that once were, but no longer are.
I was always intimidated by poetry, thinking I was too dense to understand any of it, afraid I wouldn’t get what the poet was trying to say. But in reading Dark Hours, I found it easy to just…feel. Each hauntingly beautiful line made me slow down, made me savor all the images and emotions it conjured up.
My favorites from Dark Hours:
⭐ Dear City
⭐ What is it about tenderness (1)
⭐ Geography Lesson (1)
⭐ I must say this about the city
⭐ Alunsina takes a walk in the rain
⭐ Elegy
⭐ Disappear
⭐ You there
⭐ It has come to this (2)
The experience of reading Dark Hours by Conchitina Cruz reminded me of 2 am thoughts. When you’re up really late, the world around you is quiet, and you only have your thoughts and your past to keep you company. This is the time you allow yourself to be vulnerable. These are the moments when you allow yourself to ruminate and remember. Alone, you embrace everything that haunts you.
On the surface, the poems in Dark Hours are about the city. About life in the city, how the city can be a place of refuge but also make you feel so lonely. There is a certain thrill about anonymity within a crowd. But take it too far and you begin to see what isn’t there. Who isn’t there. In between the lines, there is this powerful sense of longing. Of missing someone. Of being painfully aware that there is a missing piece.
I never imagined that a poem about rain and flooded streets could make me so emotional. But that is exactly the reaction I had on reading Dear City, the first poem in the collection. Right away, I am asked to shift my perspective. Rain is good, and it is the poorly built city that makes a villain out of rain. This poem also brought me back to my college days, of joking that we are waterproof just because our classes are the last to get suspended when storms come. Forced to walk in floodwaters to get to class, cursing the rain that transforms the street into a filthy river, and lamenting our wet feet. But in the spirit of reframing this in my mind…I guess the city floods forced me to be mindful, to actually be aware of the city I move in. Where I would normally walk quickly without a thought, I had to slow down. Observe. Find the least flooded path. Tread carefully so I don’t slip. Sometimes the rain makes you reconnect with your surroundings, grounding you in the present, in the city you have a love-hate relationship with. Am I overthinking this? Or is it just that poetry is meant to inspire us to think deeper, to feel more?
With a title like Dark Hours, it is no surprise that there are some dark subject matter in these poems. Death, violence, grief, loss, and an abundance of nostalgia are present throughout the collection. The characters in each poem carry with them their histories. Their stories are explorations of people and places that once were, but no longer are.
I was always intimidated by poetry, thinking I was too dense to understand any of it, afraid I wouldn’t get what the poet was trying to say. But in reading Dark Hours, I found it easy to just…feel. Each hauntingly beautiful line made me slow down, made me savor all the images and emotions it conjured up.
My favorites from Dark Hours:
⭐ Dear City
⭐ What is it about tenderness (1)
⭐ Geography Lesson (1)
⭐ I must say this about the city
⭐ Alunsina takes a walk in the rain
⭐ Elegy
⭐ Disappear
⭐ You there
⭐ It has come to this (2)