What is Melankholia? (Cover Reveal)

I am sure upon reading the title many of you are thinking it’s a misspelling, it is not. Those that have been following me around the web awhile are probably thinking ‘she’s playing with words again’ and kind of. Melankholia is old Greek, the spelling version for melancholia.

As defined by Merriam-Webster, melancholia is –

1: severe depression characterized especially by profound sadness and despair Tense, irritable, I crashed into a fit of melancholia and found myself crying over inconsequential problems.— Susan Wood A depressed Johnson was not the father figure that Boswell, himself prey to crippling bouts of melancholia and insecurity, wanted to celebrate.— Brooke Allen
2: a sad quality or mood : MELANCHOLY There’s a touching melancholia to his voice …— Ralph NovakLike Wallace’s breakthrough novel, “Infinite Jest,” “The Pale King” is pervaded by an air of melancholia, an acute sense of loss.— Tom McCarthy

Now, along with this Merriam-Webster also adds a ‘did you know’ section and this is where the interesting path into this post begins:

Melancholia traces back to Greek melan (“black, dark”) and cholē (“bile”). Medical practitioners once adhered to the system of humors-bodily fluids that included black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. An imbalance of these humors was thought to lead to disorders of the mind and body. One suffering from an excess of black bile (believed to be secreted by the kidneys or spleen) could become sullen and unsociable-liable to anger, irritability, brooding, and depression. Today, doctors no longer ascribe physical and mental disorders to disruptions of the four humors, but the word melancholia is still used in psychiatry (it is identified a “subtype” of clinical depression in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and as a general term for despondency.
Credit: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/melancholia#other-words

I have been open about suffering from chronic insomnia, anxiety, depression, and post traumatic stress disorder. This word seems to fit for the majority of the work that I do in the form of poetry.

With all of that out of the way, I circle back to the question at hand, what is Melankholia? Inspired by the above information I began working on another collection of poetry. It was announced around the time of the first, All of My Every Things, I planned on doing another set and that I didn’t know when I would be doing it. As this year has been a roller coaster, for everyone, and I have shared very little of what’s happened to me personally choosing instead to focus the turmoil creatively, as I tend to do anyways behind-the-scenes.

Haven’t numerous works left around after selecting them for All of My Every Things that I still wanted to publish out I needed a home for them. I also did a challenge for Napowrimo this year that created a large amount of work (check them out on the website), some great, some good, and some that could’ve been better, but writing happened nonetheless. I had, as you can see, a lot of material not to mention I had been writing a great deal with all I have had going on this year that inspired me along with past trauma and feelings I usually tap into for inspiration I decided it was time to begin collecting, polishing, and continue forward with another selection.

I began last year contacting people for possible leads into help with this projects, but when the pandemic hit much of the focus shifted, understandably, elsewhere. I took some time to readjust, focus more on projects coming up (like The Blasphemer Series: Ghosts and a short story prequel) and do what I do best when I am in situations I cannot fix…work.

The birth of Melankholia sounds easier than it really is. I have privately struggled with organization, formatting, and graphics this time. Now confident enough to make an official announcement I share introduce you to the second installment of my Dark Romanticism/Gothic Romanticism poetry collections.

This book will contain selected collected poems from All of My Every Things, poetry from my Napowrimo entries, and many previously unpublished works. What makes this collection most unique to date is I will include illustrations and images along with the poetry. Obviously, by the digital cut of the cover it will include an introduction for the reader by the wonderful poet Oliver Sheppard entitled: An Anatomy of Melankholia.

Excerpt from An Anatomy of Melankholia

But amidst Bachman’s poetic despair, amidst the doubt, amidst the references to ambiguous supernatural figures, to the brutality and the tragedy of life, and to horrors that may or may not be allegories of aspects of our human condition—amidst haunting Bachman poems that have titles like “The Horned Beasts,” “Into the Dying,” and “When You Lay My Body Down” —in Bachman’s poetry one also encounters startling flashes of hope. “A glimmer can be seen: A flame of hope,” Bachman writes in the poem “Darkest Hour Never Dies,” included in this book. “The more you focus upon it; the more it will grow.”
Perhaps this is a surprising sentiment from a woman whose thoughts traditionally run as dark Mrs. Bachman’s tend to run. But we, the readers of this collection of doomy and intriguing verse—we can also entertain hope ourselves: Hope that with Bachman’s second collection of poetry, finally available here in print, a collection that is evidence of a poetic talent growing by steady leaps and bounds—we can have hope that the fascinating journey we’re taken on by Bachman’s imagination—we can have hope that this is simply the beginning for a profound new voice in the genre of a fantastic, dark, modern, and melancholy verse.
Credit: An Anatomy of Melankholia by Oliver Sheppard/Melankholia by L. Bachman