A Glowing Review of Alan May’s Derelict Days in That Derelict Town in the Alabama Writers’ Forum

We’re thrilled to share a glowing new review of Alan May’s Derelict Days in That Derelict Town: New and Uncollected Poems, recently published by BlazeVOX [books], and now featured in the Alabama Writers’ Forum, reviewed by poet and critic Jason Gordy Walker.

May’s collection is praised for its “absurdity, concision, and playfulness,” qualities that run through his compact free verse, prose poems, and visual experiments. Walker highlights the poet’s versatility across forms, noting everything from shape poems like “Snow Globe” to narrative-laced prose poems like “The Washed-Up Actor.” His voice is unmistakably May’s: witty, deadpan, and full of surprises.

The review identifies May as a fabulist as much as a poet, working in a surreal register that invites comparison to James Tate, while grounding his work in the physical and psychological landscapes of rural Alabama. Though May avoids overt regionalism, there’s still “gravel and humidity around his diction and syntax,” as Walker beautifully puts it.

A standout element of the review is its attention to the poet’s recurring character of the boy, an isolated figure whose strange inner world comes vividly alive in poems like “The Boy and the Monster.” May’s poems invite empathy without sentimentality, often pivoting from absurdist imagery to moments of emotional clarity, even tenderness.

In perhaps the most revelatory section of the review, Walker points to the sequence “Rural Epigrams” as the book’s emotional and artistic high point. Here, May fuses the concision of haiku with the epigram’s bite, delivering lines that are both memorable and mysterious. The deadpan minimalism of “Nocturne” and the skewered beauty of “Tomato” reveal a poet at ease with both wit and lyric image.

The review closes by affirming what so many readers already know: Alan May may be playful, even mischievous, but his poetry is anything but frivolous. With references to decaying churches, anti-war satire, and the quiet death of a stray cat, May’s work wrestles with real life as much as it dazzles with imagination. Derelict Days in That Derelict Town is a book for readers who love surrealism, fables, dark humor, and the unexpected beauty of forgotten places.

We are proud to have published this remarkable book, and even more excited to see Alan May’s work receive the thoughtful attention it deserves.

Read the full review on the Alabama Writers’ Forum website and order your copy of Derelict Days in That Derelict Town today!