Discussion Guide
(for book clubs/circles, “literary salons”, etc)
Tome of Stars is a journey in poetry, equal parts art, therapy journal, and exorcism. Both a celebration and an elegy. As a single narrative arc tracing the birth and death of a relationship, each sonnet becomes a page in a tragic romance. It was written with the hope that it might resonate with those who have loved and lost on a transformational scale—the poet’s soul-siblings whose lives were riven by encounters they could neither control nor truly understand, their sanity buffeted by storms of fate that redefined and rewrote their most personal perspectives on existence and meaning.
Back to the Future with Rhyme and Meter
How long has it been since you spent time with a volume of Shakespearean sonnets? How about a contemporary collection that chronicles a lived, emotional experience?
Tome of Stars shares something singular in today’s reading landscape: a unified narrative of romance and heartbreak, told in structured verse, shaped by the language of longing, memory, and devotion. It is the poet’s hopelessly earnest cri de cœur, sung in sonnets.
Though the form is centuries old, the voice and themes are contemporary. These poems reflect on modern love, spiritual crisis, scientific wonder, and digital estrangement, alongside ancient archetypes and mythic themes. They span Hindu artistic performance to Tolkien’s legendarium.
The work is at once confessional and simultaneously universal. Readers may see echoes in these poems of their own lost moments or unspoken truths. Some may come for the craftsmanship of the sonnets, others for the emotional honesty that pulses through each line, wrestling with trauma, desperate hope, transformative intimacy and tragedy.
If your group is ready to explore something formally traditional yet thematically current, emotionally intense but intellectually rich, Tome of Stars will offer a rewarding conversation, one that lingers long after the last rhyme.
About the Poet
Stargazer is a scientist and published author of fiction who has written extensively across genres, though Tome of Stars marks a departure in both form and intimacy. Composed under a pseudonym to protect the privacy of those whose lives intersect with its story, the collection reflects years of academic engagement with the natural world, language, myth, and meaning, refracted through the deeply personal lens of love, loss, and transformation.
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