Reviews of 'Dropping Ecstasy With The Angels'

'Dee Sunshine's Dropping Ecstasy With The Angels will linger in your memory as the lyrics sing from between the surrealist covers of his thoughtful collection of poetry. Taking you on a journey of experience and enlightenment, this Scottish poet guides you through words resonating with beauty, detachment, sympathy and honesty... Overall, this collection is the work of an incredibly talented poet who is able to articulate his message with both sublime poignancy and a razor-sharp directness.'
Fionna Doney Simmonds, Moondance, Autumn 2005
Read the whole review here

'Dee Sunshine has a title to be proud of. Playing with a number of words, it declares the deliberate layers of ambiguity that characterise some (but not all) of Sunshine's work. Much of the book is written in a spirit of exultation, via an expanding imagination. Love, children, beauty and religion are recurrent themes, colouring the core, but the typically generous length of the book, accorded by Bluechrome, ensures that we see plenty... The collection, with its humorous introduction and distinctive artwork (both by the author) reveals and enormous creativity and vibrant vision.'
Will Daunt (Envoi Magazine, 2005)

'The poems collected in this volume are, at turns, decadent and exquisite... Sunshine's poems are populated by a remarkable diversity of characters: junkies, angels, the deranged, the spiritually lost. By offering such diverse portraits, Sunshine juxtaposes the gritty and the sublime present on the edges of human experience... many readers will be delightfully surprised to discover Sunshine's dark and gritty vision of the world.'
John Garrison (Star*Line Magazine #28/3, Spring 2005)

'Dee Sunshine's thick poetry volume Dropping Ecstasy With The Angels is a trippy and gritty journey of the spirit led by a restless, often-times raging guide through exotic landscapes... the writing in Dropping Ecstasy With The Angels is intense and beautiful, the imagery striking, and the perspective challenging.'
R. David Fulcher (Samsara Magazine #12, Spring 2005)

'And you should definitely read this book. It's a work that explores so much - it's new-age, it's Catholic, it's erotic, and God, it's full of drugs. It's hard to write well about being on drugs but Dee Sunshine manages it. It's a book that's worth reading for the prose poetry alone, especially It's Friday And They Don't Send Flowers Anymore. I loved too the warm humour in many of the poems - a warm, forgiving, humane humour appropriate for this very humane book. Check out ViRtuAL VIRuS, Sartre's Eyes and A Neo-Post-Modern Love Poem.'
Jacinta Nandi-Pietschmann (Riot Angel Magazine #3, 2005)

'This is not a lighthearted read. There are moments of terrible pain, of lonely emptiness, of insane decadence which will upset the prudish, and of spiritual crises. Dropping Ecstasy with the Angels is a serious and important collection with poems that are ultimately beautiful, and that speak to the reader at the deepest, most powerful level. It is exactly what good poetry should be.'
Maggie Ball, The Compulsive Reader, 2005
Read the whole of Maggie Ball's review here

'Sunshine is a poet who gets straight to the point. And in the process, what he creates is not our usual definition of poetry, perhaps, but it remains something equally good; for what he does without in rhythm, he certainly makes up for with his word play... Dropping Ecstasy With The Angels is Sunshine's second collection of poetry. Taking off from where his The Bad Seed left off, the poet walks a more tempered path in the present selection, looking at the world with a wiser eye... when one compares his earlier works with the present one, Sunshine certainly comes across as a definite talent - one steadily moving on towards exhibiting his true potential. And going by the sea change in the content and style between his two collection, we can still expect a lot more out of him.'
Anirbhan Ray Choudhury (Quill & Ink, February 2005)

'Dropping Ecstasy asks a reader to step into the world of suicides, drug addicts, and everyday individuals contemplating a world that isn't reasonable, isn't bright, and certainly isn't ending happily ever after. It will make many readers uncomfortable—not a bad thing, by any means—but most readers will also find in it poems and passages that speak strongly to them and will draw them back to reread and rethink. '
Sarah Miller (Half Drunk Muse, Fall 2005)

'Just read some of your poems from Dropping Ecstasy With the Angels , my god 'The Morning After' is so powerful and I loved 'My Father the Painter'.
Clare Potter

'Dee Sunshine is an independent-minded writer whose work explores deep levels of human experience in fresh ways. In the present collection, his firm and striking imagery throws light on such subjects as love, suicide, the creative process, absent fathers, and some of the paradoxes of social change. The poems read well, and will give pleasure (and thought) to a variety of readers.'
Edwin Morgan

'I want to wholeheartedly endorse Dee's work to you: I have known him for 20 years now from when we were both scruffily young & anonymous, and I've witnessed his particular commitment as an artist and writer unfold and deepen, glad to have been a part of it in his various and always fascinating publications. I feel his work is genuinely accessible, saying important and vitally human things at a time when post-modern poetry has in so many ways lost the ability to communicate about things that really matter. I feel sure Dee's work will always gain and sustain a readership because of its mixture of communication and quality, and most of all because of its whole-making intent'
Jay Ramsay

'Where Sunshine triumphs is in his vision. His is the most expansive book of these three poets (a reference to other Bluechrome publications), the one which strives to present something new in form, content and above all in ideas. This is one which will inspire you if you are a poet and uplift you if you are a student or a reader.'
Alan Corkish, Stride Magazine Website, May 2004

'In Dropping Ecstasy With The Angels by Dee Sunshine you feel you are in the presence of a committed writer who probably has more interesting work to follow... His portraits of women and their lives are sensitive, imaginative and he presents their suffering with feeling and language and emotion... Sunshine draws heavily for his imagery on Celtic, Christian and Indian mythology and often, especially in his more religious poems, betrays himself as a New Age priest, whom you either agree with or are damned...A novel (Stealing Heaven From The Lips Of God) by Sunshine is due out (November 2004) which, given his facility with language and good exploitation of the prose poem, should make for an interesting read.'
John Couth, Shearsman Magazine, 2004

'I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed the passion,verve and depth of your poetry, and I also wanted to tell you how wonderful it was that you had so much of it on your website. It made me really appreciative. I am definitely in the not-so wealthy artist category, and you know if your poetry hadn't been there free, on the webpage I wouldn't have read it, and passed it on to people who loved it, and isn't that what it's about in a huge way. I might never have bought your books, but I will now!'
Sascha Akhtar

'We judge this book to be outstanding example of popular modern poetry. The author uses words like color to bring an image to life. He has a fine gift and the poetry here is of a consistently high quality.'
Judges of The 'Poetry 2000' Poetry Book Award (for which 'Dropping Ecstasy With The Angels' was awarded 4th place)

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