Reviews
Extended Reviews
Crittenden’s interstellar collection renders in verse an epic yet intimate quest for the future of humanity, as its unnamed narrator, the “Inhabitant,” witnesses devastation befall the Earth (“my world burns alive with nothing i can do to help”) and then, “ejected from my world,” begins a long journey into space, first through our solar neighborhood (“mercury, venus, bright, burnt, and boiling, waiting to be consumed”) and then beyond, “eversearching, everlearning.” The account is vivid and full of feeling—Crittenden likens leaving the Earth to falling, “the gravity losing its attraction,” and the ascent through our atmosphere to being “like a runaway balloon”—and emphasizes throughout the silence and isolation of the heavens, all while occasionally looking back to Earth.
Besides the mysteries of the cosmos and a fury at our mistreatment of the Earth, themes of change and time power Inhabitant, as its narrator marvels at humanity’s small-scale memory, which finds “descendants slowly forgetting / about each and every one who came before.” The Inhabitant has time for such contemplation, because space travel, we learn, is all about waiting; as the Inhabitant pushes ahead, searching for a new home, reflecting on the lesson that our relationship with a planet should be one of cohabitation. These pained thoughts (“never planted what i ate, never returned the trail how i found it”) resonate as the narrator floats, adrift, in the collection’s searching middle section.
Despite the cosmic subject matter Crittenden’s free verse is concrete and direct, its imagery and metaphor always clear, even inviting. The interstellar reaches and the planets the Inhabitant searches may be bleak, but a potent sense of hope warms the void, as the Inhabitant presses ahead in the face of disaster, acknowledging the worst of what our species has done while searching tirelessly for a chance to get it right the next time. This engaging meditation on humanity’s end—and possible new beginning—will move readers with a love of the cosmic.
a comfort in knowing earth is close,
knowing i’m within arm’s reach.”
The search for a place to call home is often a daunting one. Yet, for the speaker in Crittenden’s poetry compilation, the challenge is far greater as he is navigating through the entire universe to find an abode in alignment with him. An almost seamless fusion of storytelling and poetry, Crittenden’s compilation is bursting with energy and meaningful introspection of life in the cosmos that connects with all audiences. Themes of hope clash with isolation against the backdrop of scenes painted vividly using poetic devices, yielding a stunning splendor of images that probe into what is truly possible. Beyond the earth, are the possibilities truly limitless?
Inhabitant, by Charles Crittenden, is a collection of poetry that blends storytelling in a unique way. It follows the Inhabitant through the universe after being expelled from Earth for mistreating it. Readers will follow the Inhabitant on his quest to find a new home and see him explore his dreams and hopes, as he searches the galaxy.
This collection of poetry tells the Inhabitant’s story one short poem at a time. Unlike typical short stories, telling his story through poetry allows Crittenden the opportunity to explore words and emotions in a nontraditional manner. Readers will interact with the story on a more personal level given the unusual presentation of the poems. They are not written in a standard meter and line arrangement, rather they are organically placed to convey the message that the author is putting to paper. With poetry, the placement of words is just as important as the words themselves and Crittenden exemplifies this connection.
Readers will find the details presented to be well thought out. They are given just enough information to form a visual but left with enough questions to give the poems thought and ponder what Crittenden could be saying. This style of poetry leads readers to the story but allows them to dive deeper into the meaning and emotions that are being conveyed. The emotions incited by Crittenden’s words dynamic and introspective.
Inhabitant is a lyrical story with powerful prose that will leave readers contemplating their own place here on Earth, and the relationships they have with the world and people around them. For those on a spiritual journey of enlightenment this persuasive and compelling collection of poems will guide readers on a journey of self-evaluation and reflective thoughts. For readers that just enjoy unique poetry and prose, they will be delighted and entertained by the world Crittenden has created.
Reviewed by Jessica Barbosa for Readers’ Favorite
Inhabitant by Charles Crittenden is a unique story-telling collection of poetry that focuses on the Inhabitant and the journey to find a new home. The Inhabitant floats past various planets that don’t want them or can’t sustain them. The Inhabitant wishes the unexpected expulsion from Earth was nothing more than a dream but this is a new reality and the Inhabitant is faced with regrets and a sincere wish to go back in time and change what could have been.
Charles Crittenden’s Inhabitant pulled me in with his interesting form of story-telling. The Inhabitant’s journey throughout the universe, searching for a place called home, was beautifully expressed in a series of poems that moved my heart. As I read through each chapter, I could feel the raw and heartfelt emotions of the Inhabitant. I felt as though I was the one in their shoes, traversing the universe, searching and hoping to find a new home despite encountering disappointments again and again. Reading this book reminds me of the way the earth is right now; we humans have not been very kind to it. I grow fearful of how, one day, we too would be like the Inhabitant, wandering about, lost and missing the home we should have cared for.
I feel that Inhabitant truly captures the feeling of homesickness and heartache; each poem has different forms depending on the Inhabitant’s emotions and current experience. When the Inhabitant falls, so do the words, creating this unique reading experience that carried me through the character’s stream of consciousness. If I close my eyes I can see myself floating endlessly among the stars, hoping to find a place to rest my weary body. Overall, the Inhabitant’s journey is long but the hope of finding a new place to belong to gives the story a bittersweet feeling that kept me reading until the end. Inhabitant is a special tale that tugged at my heartstrings and taught me to appreciate and care for the home I have now. Great job!
Reviewed by: Barbara Bamberger Scott
In poetic reverie, an earthly being leaves his planet, and alone or at times with others, he navigates through space and time, giving him moments of insight: why did he leave Earth? Can he return? Does he truly want to go back?
A four-part saga in free verse with intriguing spacings and clusters of words, Crittenden’s work begins when he, as the first-person narrator, realizes that he has fallen, broken his heart, and no longer experiences the sensation of earthly gravity. Where he awakens is an alien landscape, fiery and seemingly timeless. He begins to feel regrets for his former life mistakes, blaming his new condition on events of the past, even as he is flying, perhaps in a single-man craft, through darkness, observing his former planet from far outside and above it:
a ship to find a home,
built for one intergalactic passenger,
with only what I need to survive.
As he speeds through darkness, he sees constellations up close, bringing memories of the science books he read as a child. He finds a spider in his ship, eventually accepting it as his friend and companion, just as he has accepted his fate as a space traveler, with stations to visit and explore, and ever-changing visions of the solar system he once called home. He notes that those on his planet take it for granted, just as he once did:
never planted what I ate, never returned the trail how I found it,
never saw its majesty.
He begins to wonder if he ever lived on earth at all. Occasional unnamed others join him to explore new realms, but ultimately he journeys alone but for the spider, not finding what it is he seeks, what he left behind, and once concluding, “no matter how far I travel, I’m an alien.” His final destination will be – unknown.
Crittenden as the poet’s yarn spinning “I” writes with the plain statements of a practiced wordsmith, but always with an etheric feeling that borders on Zen meditation. He, the inhabitant now without a place to inhabit, is constantly thinking, remembering, and wondering, as his reader will, what can happen next. One may surmise that his lonely space trek is an elaborate metaphor for piecing together the events of his life and trying to make sense of them. But the true intent lies securely hidden in the mind of the poet, and readers will make of it what they will. What is most significant is that they will enjoy the trip and admire Crittenden for bringing it to the printed page.
Quill says: Charles Crittenden’s Inhabitant is a journey of closely held inner speculation and far-reaching outer realities, a rich combination of psychology and sci-fi couched in poetic episodes and offering much food for contemplation.
Acollection of SF–inspired poems focuses on searching for—and redefining—home.
In this four-part volume of poems, a person known only as “the inhabitant” is ejected from Earth and must find a new place to live. In the opening poem, “The Drop,” the speaker grapples with suddenly discovering themselves homeless. They watch their former planet burn, and as they let go of their past life, they vow to recreate a better version of themselves. They drift through the ether “like a runaway balloon” until a ship outfitted for one person appears. They consider a “home on the moon” but “everything screams of earth.” They contemplate life on Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn but instead of relocating, decide to continue journeying. Though the inhabitant grows weary, they still find hope in an orbit when “stars show their faces” and they see “a glitter of light, the sun, / still alive. / comforted, i continue on.” They find companionship with a stowaway spider on the ship but eventually wonder, “where’s my copilot?” when loneliness strikes. Though they find a planet to inhabit, they soon grow agitated and leave to “navigate to my home, / to my future, / … / wherever that may be.” The book reads like a stripped-down novel in stanzas. Throughout, Crittenden skillfully plays with the white space on the page to impart the sensation of falling into the void or of being lost in the vast sky. The author is adept at describing this “environment of endless possibility.” From the “weak, spongy” ground to “the cool kiss of a dewy fog,” he skillfully transports readers to this strange, extraterrestrial setting. He asks profound questions like “what’s a planet without inhabitants? / what’s an inhabitant without a planet?” and makes poignant observations, such as “a planet alone can thrive, / but a drifting man can only truly exist on solid ground.” Though the work is based in SF, it isn’t hard to apply its reflections to all individuals who feel untethered or alien, no matter where they make their homes.
A creative use of poetry tells a captivating, supernatural tale.
An absorbing piece of verse fiction about determination, courage, resistance, and hope…
Told in verse, Crittenden’s debut space opera explores the many transitions of life: from rootless to new homes, from failure to success, from hope to despair and back again as the protagonist travels through the universe looking for a new home after the environmental calamities leave Earth inhabitable. The Inhabitant has been unexpectedly expelled from Earth after years of misusing it. Their only hope is to travel across the universe and find a new home. But the planets they fly past during their journey are either unsustainable or uninviting. Constantly on the move in their spaceship, the inhabitant must rely on their experience to find their new home while trying to deal with the heartache of the past trauma and fear of the future. Crittenden combines elements of hard SF, dystopian, and environmental fiction against a devastatingly bleak backdrop, and his evocative worldbuilding is created with precision and vivid details. The descriptions of the destruction brought out on the earth by environmental calamities, though remain in the background but are affecting nonetheless: the lonely, desolate Earth as an almost destroyed planet remains a concept, with the protagonist never setting foot there, but it comes fully alive in readers’ minds nonetheless. The space, with its vast galaxies, hums with frostiness, evoking a sense of grim desolation. Crittenden has a knack for character, and readers will easily immerse themselves in the lonely protagonist’s shuffling world. Under his expert depiction, the inhabitant comes alive, revealing their inner turmoil, insecurities, apprehensions, hopes, and desires. He enhances the protagonist’s aimless wanderings with moments of deep poignant introspections, creating a story filled with a rich understanding of humanity’s darkness and light. Themes of climate change, environmental crisis, exploration, adventure, hope, dreams, longing, loneliness, fear, heartbreak, heartache, perseverance, and determination are strong throughout. Along the way, Crittenden delves into questions of what it means to search for that which we want in life and what makes a person move on even when there’s nothing to look forward to. There is not much plot, but the protagonist’s relatable search for meaning in life and intriguingly timely storyline delivers on most levels. An ode to humanity’s resilience in the face of extreme circumstances, this SF tales dives into gloomy, painful caverns and emerges in bouquets of beguiling hope.
The desolate setting of the vast universe, provides an evocative backdrop for this poignant dystopian tale written in free verse by Crittenden. Centuries of environmental devastation has destroyed Earth, making it unsuitable to live. The inhabitant must journey across the universe to find a new home. But the world of galaxies is desolate and grim and without a solid ground. Struggling to come to terms with the trauma of Earth’s destruction, the inhabitant has nothing but dreams of the past and hopes for the future combined with their experience if they want to find a new home. Crittenden makes good use of usual environmental components and space elements of science fiction, delivering a devastatingly bleak yet hopeful tale. The writing is crisp, and there is authenticity to the worldbuilding as the lone protagonist shuffles between galaxies trying to look for a place to live. Introspective and determined, the inhabitant remains an intriguing protagonist, making it easy for the reader to root for him. Lonely and longing for belonging, he ultimately finds his purpose in the searching. The sense of hope is alive in the protagonist’s heart, and it’s alive in this story that combines complex themes of humanity’s need for belongingness and companionship, thrill of searching, despair, dream, hope, desire, determination, and resilience in the face of extreme circumstances in pristine verse. A promising debut.
Reviewed by: Samantha Hui
Experimental, daring, yet subtle, Inhabitant ponders the gravity of human existence through nearly alien eyes.
Inhabitant is energetic and eerily silent. This narrative poetry book by Charles Crittenden follows the story of a tired man trying to find a sense of belonging both internally and within the physical universe. This brilliant and sincere book will have readers considering what they take for granted on a daily basis.
“is this how dogs feel? With everything this slow. / they get one lifetime we get many. /
do they see us moving at a snail’s pace wondering / why we won’t seize every last moment?”
The inhabitant, a man who once inhabited Earth, sets his sights on finding a new place to call home. Due to the toils of dangerous human action against their home, Earth has gone up in flames and rejected, and possibly ejected, every last person. The inhabitant ambles through the galaxy trying to find a home and companionship that, perhaps this time, he will not take for granted. In his quiet search for belonging, he contemplates existential issues involving loneliness, environmentalism, and whether or not the stars know that we exist.
“do they know what they’re a part of, / does the north star know we count on it?”
The speaker may be the “inhabitant,” but he is all but an inhabitant. He lacks a home to go or return to. Rather, he must learn to find a sense of home within himself or else he will fall into an insanity caused by longing for what can no longer be. Interestingly enough, the inhabitant also refers to himself as the “watcher.” He is the watcher because he has witnessed the wonders created by people as well as the destruction of the Earth caused by mankind. In being the inhabitant, he is someone both at home and lost from home; as watcher, he is both able to recognize the destruction of the Earth and is implicit in its destruction.
“earth had always been a self-sustaining world, / though what’s a planet without inhabitants? / what’s an inhabitant without a planet? / a planet can thrive, / but a drifting man can only truly exist on solid ground.”
What I love about this book is the sort of ebb and flow rhythm it takes on. The free form nature of the poems allows for the writing to rise and fall on the page and in context. The story represents a rebirth and rebuilding of both the earth and the speaker. At the beginning of the book, the speaker dreams of the past and wishes to bring back that which once was: “too many planets out there for me / to wonder when this one will match my dreams.” However, toward the end of the book, the speaker comes to understand that misery lies in longing for what cannot exist again. So his dreams transform from hopes for the past into a hope for the future: “the rest of my life waits on the other side / the
starts turn off one by one / as I disappear into my dreams, / into my future.”
Inhabitant covers the trials of humankind through the eyes of a human-made alien. The story reminds me of Italo Calvino’s collection of stories, Cosmicomics, that creates human stories from scientific facts. Sincere and human-focused, Inhabitant comes with an easy recommendation from me to those interested in the cross between poetry and science fiction.
Poetry readers who choose Inhabitant will find that it represents a fine blend of poetry and storytelling as it surveys the thoughts and experiences of the Inhabitant, who has been expelled from Earth for mistreating the planet, and who searches the universe for a new home. When the narrator opens the story, it’s with the hopes that his new condition is but a dream, in ‘The Drop’: “…turns out the only thing you can count on isn’t death or taxes./all my life i’ve taken gravity for granted./always held that attraction between my body and my world,/stuck together spinning around the sun/day by day…” As his journey continues, poetry readers receive a pointed story of travel, home, a changing sense of place, and a sense of introspection as the narrator’s connection to Earth fades and the universe widens: “…no one to take the wheel,/days and days through endless black./moonstops where i float without realizing where i am or where i’m headed./a mint collection of dust from the planets i’ve seen./count all the stars,/and again in case i missed one./stuck in perpetual motion,/the route will never end,/my proving ground/to appreciate a home when i finally arrive.”
The exploration proves at once frightening and enlightening. Readers are drawn by a form of free verse that moves from the microcosm of past familiar territory to the macrocosm of the universe, yet still affords opportunity for inspecting Earthly connections and personal choice. An example lies in ‘A Profound Realization Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Spider Who Lives In My Ship,’ in which the narrator saves a stowaway and learns a lesson about thinking about others outside his immediate world. As hope, home, and repeated failures become emergent themes, poetry readers will enjoy an inspection that celebrates the basics of human life: gravity, atmosphere, and checklists of the physical elements that define ‘home.’ Its special, creative journey will prove thought-provoking for any poetry enthusiast interested in the sense of place and purpose in the life of a newly-created nomad.