Dear Midnight by Zack Grey - Book Review

Grey combines aesthetic with a tragic love story in Dear Midnight—all told through progressive poems.

The aesthetic of day to night parallels to the ups and downs of a relationship. From initial puppy love to a fairy tale relationship, the first section in particular sets up a story between lovers like the introduction to a novel. 

With the story-like progression, Grey utilizes his storytelling, aesthetic, and poetry to entice the reader to keep turning the pages. The colors of the pages also adhere to this progression, signifying a certain aspect of the poems and story. Within a large number of individual poems, Grey changes the visual style by altering the structure of the poems. 

He uses waves, stretched words, and circular flow to enhance his aesthetic and purpose of each poem. Additionally, there’s an added aesthetic in symbols that represent the transition from day to night. In line with the theme of Dear Midnight, the cover is simple but dynamic and conveys to potential readers a tenderness of the book’s subject.

The graceful aesthetic Grey establishes enhances the emotions in his poems. The structure in which they’re written is thoughtful and feels personal in a way to Grey himself. Grey also trades standard grammatical structure in favor of more fluid phrasing and punctuation. He balances aesthetic, raw emotions, and poetic language in excellent way. 

In some of the poems, he uses repetition which, when read aloud (in particular), reinforces the idea that the point of view of Dear Midnight is a person thinking to himself about his lover. This ‘personal touch’ is perfect for the style Grey introduces.

While some of his poems stick to more common structures or flow, others are unique yet still flow seamlessly throughout the book. With a simplistic cover, Grey’s poetry/storyline is one that is versatile and relatable.