Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite

Frank Karan’s Utopian Race is a poetry collection that explores themes of societal decay, environmental collapse, and the human search for meaning through varied poetic styles. The title poem Utopian Race pleads for unity and acceptance amidst ecological and moral crisis, combining emotional appeals with political urgency. Accumulating Toxins employs grotesque medical imagery and erratic free verse to depict the psychological impact of a toxic world. Deeper Stupor critiques apathy and addiction through associative language and drug metaphors, portraying a descent into numbness. In Opportunity Knocks, rhyming couplets and fable-like rhythm reveal the cost of ambition and moral compromise. Totemic meditates on nature and indigenous reverence, using surreal imagery and abstract diction to lean into human insignificance. Together, these poems and more form a thematically cohesive exploration of a disjointed, troubled world.

Utopian Race by Frank Karan offers a sharp, well composed collection that speaks unflinchingly and with grit. Karan’s writing is crisp and assured, often mixing irony with a sense of faded hope. The language feels deliberately unpolished at times, as if daring the reader to look closer. Among the standout pieces, Mid Western Town is a critique on stagnation, decay, and lost ambition. The town becomes a metaphor for dying ideals and unresolved history. Stylistically, it employs rugged imagery and a Western motif in loosely structured free verse, evoking a cyclic, almost cinematic desolation.. Likewise, What Happened to Woodstock hits with a blunt kind of honesty, using rhyme and repetition not to soothe, but to provoke. Karan doesn’t romanticize the past so much as mourn what’s been lost and question what replaced it. While the collection doesn’t aim to comfort, it succeeds in making you pause, and that, perhaps, is its most powerful offering. Very highly recommended.