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Epithalamium: A song or poem in honor of a bride and bridegroom.
Antiepithalamia & Other Poems of Regret and Resentment is John Tottenham’s second book of poetry, a sequence of mean-spirited love poems, paying particular respect to the institution of marriage, and a meditation on the subjects of regret and resentment. Morbid, bitter, self-pitying… perhaps, but offered in the spirit of giving as a tonic to those who are not blissfully content in love and work, and as a bracing antidote to the disease of unconvincing positivity that seems to infect almost every area of contemporary culture.
Tottenham reveals with great aptitude what it means to be human. And to be human is to err. To have doubts, even over those most fundamental positions. In revealing those innermost contradictions and self-doubt, these poems compel the reader to consider their own assumptions: do you really want what you have, or are you simply subscribing to conformist patterns that are as much societal as biological?
