CHRISTOPHER STEPHEN  SODEN

Its softness is matched by the heft of its content and is a tremendous example of modern gay poetics….anchored by the talent in Soden’s rhythmic weaving of emotion, place and time.

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-Emerson Whitney : Lambda Literary

 

I rarely let emotions get the best of me but it was impossible not to with these gorgeous poems. I felt as if Soden pulled me into his life as he told me about it. There is something existentially honest about his verse. At times witty and playful, at times somber and introspective, Soden has written something for every taste. He deals with important themes—sexuality, gender, masculinity, identity and the nature of the human condition.

-Amos Lassen - Confessions - Reviews by Amos Lassen

 

Closer is an extraordinary glimpse into the realm of self-discovery and the intense, playful, and raw… Soden’s…collection of poetry is a sharp blade cutting…to the juicy core of love and pain. Soden…carries us through dream-like phrases, or… shocks us back to reality. But it’s the vulnerability that truly encompasses the beauty of Soden’s work. Reading Closer is to pull aside a veil and witness the struggle, honesty of growth, and sexuality of a gay man.

-S.L. Gillespie - Dorothy’s Closet (interview)

Soden’s strength is twofold:  first, in his lush evocation of the world, the happenings, and the encounters that call the self into being, and second, in the incandescent honesty of that emerging self….As these poems reveal their pain, struggle, and transcendence, a miracle becomes possible: the myth of the exiled sinner is re-imagined…Lovers, gods, fathers, and buddies prowl the pages of Closer, lying in wait to engage the novice-self and lead it into deeper understanding of what it means to be male, what it means to be gay, and what it means to be human.

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-Lisa Huffaker - Chelsea Station​



There are moments when his liquid language is so mellifluous that his words placed as they are can be simply enough, without the thought or the meaning of the poem necessary - the first reading. But returning to these poems often makes them best friends. (*****)

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-Grady Harp - Amazon.com

The emotionally rich landscape in Christopher Soden's Closer veers from the contemporary to the ancient Greeks, covering the existential to the queer condition, in a delightfully poignant manner. A brilliantly poetic trip to a sleep clinic leads the author to question the nature of touch between two men; in another, he sees the "blizzard of pitch and muck every day, everybody just shoving and biting/and beating on each other." Whether he's grappling with a childhood neighborhood sociopath a lack of grief over his father's death, a bisexual James Dean, or the secret crossing to man-on-man bliss, Soden's poetry is amazingly moving.

 

-Diane Anderson-Minshall - Advocate Bookshelf

Christopher Soden’s Closer is somewhat more traditional free-verse but no less striking for its versatility as well as its veracity. Some poets play on one theme or image for longer than necessary, overplaying their hands. Soden’s work is wide-ranging, covering a variety of subjects both universal and personal. However, he doesn’t ignore queer issues or erotica, especially in the frank “The Hand I Was Dealt” or one of my favorite pieces here, “Jockstrap.” ……it’s a wonderful read.



-Jerry Wheeler : Out in Print

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Closer is a collection of sixty-two poems by gay writer/poet Christopher Stephen Soden. These gems sparkle on the page, little snapshots of a gay man’s life, experiences, hates and loves, frustrations and joys. I am no expert on poetry, and seldom read poems by any author, but I thoroughly enjoyed this collection. The writing is vivid, powerful. The poignant observations behind each poem seemed like a leaf from my own life, things I related to, only  couched with such beautiful prose that I often felt mesmerized, reading many of them over and over just to wallow in Soden’s beautiful wordplay.

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-Alan Chin : Gay/Lesbian Fiction Book Reviews