Horizontal Ensemble, by Nolan Dannels

Poetry, chapbook, 28 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Comprised of seven poems whose titles combine orchestral sections with increasingly advanced weapons of warfare, Horizontal Ensemble thematically explores the historical sensation of destruction, both of bodies and of minds, through seemingly stream-of-conscious rhyme patterns and carefully crafted wordplay. These poems illustrate the conflict between identity and history, as well as the ardent will to overcome all odds in order to put our collective suffering into words.

The poems dance from tone to tone and mood to mood. They are written in a fragmented style that complements the chapbook’s imagistic mode of dramatic storytelling. In a relatively experimental but not quite avant-garde fashion, these poems’ lines and stanzas read across the pages horizontally, forging textual landscapes for the reader to experience and leading them on a journey through mistakes made and life lessons learned.

Ultimately, the message of Horizontal Ensemble is to know pain and to heal from it.

Nolan Dannels is a Persian American writer and musician with a Master's in English Language and Literature from the University of Edinburgh. He studies modern and contemporary Anglophone poetry as a Literature PhD candidate at UC San Diego, where he served as the Editor in Chief of Alchemy. His writing appears in Kissing Dynamite, Trouvaille Review, Wine Cellar Press, Wishbone Words, Snakeskin Poetry Webzine, The New Verse News, and Qafiyah Review, which nominated him for the 2025 Best of the Net anthology. His music appears in Hare's Paw Literary Journal.