Jan Herman's "Shadow Words" (2023/2026)

n.p.: Phantom Outlaw Press (book, poetry), 2026.
8.75" x 5.625" x 0.625", 132 pages, hardcover without dust jacket as issued, ISBN 979-8-321608-78-4.

Shadow Words by poet, author, editor, and publisher (etc.) Jan Herman, as published in a hardcover with pictorial boards [without dust jacket] by Phantom Outlaw Press (n.p.) in 2026. Book design by Jakob Boyarsky. This is a "selection of deformed sonnets."

The author brought to my attention that the poem on page 19 includes a mention of William S. Burroughs, in the line "Drive fast, Bill, for heavens ache." A minor mention, but from someone with a deep Burroughs connection as a publisher and editor.

This copy was inscribed by the author to me and received as a gift.

Contents: 

• Fourteen:
• "I saw the cold glitter..."
• "I was there in asphalt..."
• "The news so near my breath..."
• "My timetable had become a dream..."
• "In the dirty stockings of Adolf..."
• "Was it a vivace sneer when Solomon said..."
• "In the pitch black..."
• "Is someone hammering..."
• "the pecker..."
• "The more books we read..."
• "Observe how they are written..." [includes reference to Burroughs]
• Mortal Coil:
• "Walked to a hanging..."
• "Past hopes..."
• "A simple piano piece..."
• "Mary B foretold..."
• "When words died..."
• "Kisses did not last..."
• "On the sunny island of friendship..."
• "Deliberately faulty..."
• "At the secular end of days..."
• "He went unnamed..."
• "The coffeehouse loop..."
• "Sobered by..."
• "Death comes in all sizes..."
• Your Obituary Is Waiting:
• "The longest deepest cut..."
• "Seventy years ago..."
• "She was meek..."
• "In the good old bad old days..."
• "Stealthy..."
• "The indifferent spectator..."
• "In the sawdust heart..."
• "'Corragio'..."
• "The corpse blinked..."
• "My ego prefers..."
  
• "The first day of spring..."
• "Kneaded..."
• "Incandescent poet..."
• "The tyranny of rhyme..."
• Small Thefts:
• "Poems easy to read..."
• "It was a small price to pay..."
• "I was one of four..."
• "The bridge jumper's..."
• "My typically slothful thoughts..."
• "America's top shitholer goes..."
• "This emptiness is my private lair..."
• "No shore receives them..."
• "'I am a complete nobody.' ..."
• "Home again..."
• "Her years of misery..."
• "He suffered..."
• "The...usual..."
• "Erasmus was..."
• "When I gaze at Bellaart's art..."
• "The glass bell of midnight..."
• "As bones awake..."
• "Kings — there were so many..."
• "He called himself..."
• "'You've been named...'"
• "When my body expires..."
• Mistress Death:
• "Daphne du Maurier..."
• "'Odious Goneril and Regan...'"
• "'My dear Cordelia...'"
• "The day before Yom Kippur..."
• "'Finally,' he said..."
• "Shall we..."
• "She's a city-dwelling..."
• "The buds on the trees suddenly blossomed..."
• "If you were here, you'd be..."
• "Another getaway..."
• "Shall we now weep..."
• "I must stop..."
• "The grand pyannah..."
• "It was no fantasy..."
• "How shall I say this? ..."
• "Why am I getting that ad on my device? ..."
• "I will not reply..."
• "The stone lions at the gate..."
• "Four-mile walk..."
• "in these..."
• "There are things..."
• "When our beginning and our end..."
• "The morning light takes its time..."
• "Leaning on the elbow of eternity..."
• What Comes After:
• "Walking solo..."
• "She is swift to remind me..."
• "It is not a matter..."
• "So unlike the realm..."
• "Her days all flee from her..."
• "Ghosts..."
• "'Button up and walk' ..."
• "I'm a human drape..."
• "Silent armies..."
• "In the pissing rain last night..."
• "Dead silence from that hustler..."
• "There he was in a dream..."
• "Until there is no dream..."
• "So I am getting ready..."
• "Because I was touched..."
• "He spoke in biblical flourishes..."
• "The glide begins, direction down..."
• "When age feels like..."
• "You are at your age..."
• "By day I sleep, by..."
• "It's very late..."
• "Suddenly I felt..."
• "Let us enter..."
• "ENVOI"
• about the author
• also by Jan Herman