Sunguine Verses

    Poetry has a reputation for being obscure and dull. If you were a marketing whiz and someone gave you a contract to make poetry more appealing to the mainstream, you might say that modern verse needs:

     -- more romance

     -- more vampires

     -- rhyme

     As of today, you can find all three in an "opera in verse" called The Night Library of Sternendach.

 

     This book, composed entirely of sonnets, is a tale of forbidden love and endless vendetta set in Europe of the early 1960s. The local ruler and his clan have long been creatures of the night. They are held in check by a clan of vampire hunters, who suffer the vamps to live so long as they never again feast on human prey. The tense detente between the two families has endured for many years now. But wait! The nubile daughter of the vampire hunters is a bibliophile, and the ruling bloodsucker has a magnificent library. What happens when they begin to meet in secret? Swells of emotion, that's what!

     It's quite novel (ha-ha) to read a straightforward story rendered in verse these days. Jessica Levai is sufficiently nimble as a poet to keep the story moving along while not drawing attention to the sonnet form with awkward rhymes or clunky phrasing. The metrical rigor and chiming end-lines truly help the tale to feel more like an opera. Since we can't go back to the Met just yet, The Night Library of Sternendach might be the safest way to slake your desire for sturm and drang.  

 

Sooooooooooooon