Selena Cotte

Selena Cotte is a poet/writer/shapeshifter living in Chicago by way of Orlando. Her poems and stories are published or forthcoming in journals such as HADLigeiaMaudlin House & others. She can be found online @selenacotte.

A REVIEW OF JOSHUA DALTON’S I HATE YOU, PLEASE READ ME by Selena Cotte

Joshua Dalton’s debut collection I Hate You, Please Read Me (House of Vlad Press, Feb 2021) can also be read as a novel in fragments: It uses tweets, direct messages, flash-length stories, and a much-anticipated closing screenplay to communicate a pitiful, media-saturated existence.  While never explicit, it seems clear that the stories and interactions all exist in dare-we-say anti-hero Marshall Crawford’s world in varying degrees of intimacy, to paint a character portrait of self-pity, self-awareness, and self-abuse. Even stories about other characters appear as representations of his own self-image, merely presented from an angle, using TV tropes and dripping with…

Continue Reading...