book review: ptsd martini by dario cvencek
by David Estringel
Writing about trauma can be tricky business. It can be tricky for the survivor ready to share his or her story with the world. It can be tricky for the reader who, while sympathetic, can never really know the true depth and breadth of atrocity and suffering another has endured. Further complicating matters, the transfer of such experiences to an unsuspecting audience is a delicate thing, which (if not handled correctly) can turn a narrative of strength and resilience into a soul-depleting triangulation of trauma-dumping that quickly obscures the harrowing beauty of the author’s words with distraction and emotional shrapnel. Dario Cvencek’s debut poetry collection PTSD Martini (Carbonation Press, 2025) is an admirable example of the former, walking its rubble-strewn path on its search for recovery and light, while subverting reader expectations by redefining paradigms of war and suffering. Cvencek’s work reveals hope and the kind of wisdom that can only be attained through the emergence from the other end of something truly horrible.
PTSD Martini, while explicitly autobiographical, is a deeply reflective collection of verse, written by a survivor of some of the worst that humans are capable of doling out to each other, a poet who has carried on as a refugee and an immigrant and a liver of everyday life with tenacity and metal, looking forward to the future but through shadows from the past that never seem to fade away. At their core, and despite the sense of loss and chaos and alienation one perceives through their reading, Cvencek’s poems convey an optimism (if not in glimpses and glimmers) that promise the reader a hopeful release from his or her own demons. At times. his pieces are read with journalistic precision (“Gunning It”), while at others they are more lyrical and emotionally evocative (“Fire Works?”). What Cvencek does so remarkably well is convey the horrors and challenges of past through unadulterated storytelling, free from the messiness and self-indulgence of unresolved emotions. Pleasingly, he seems to understand the importance of emotional distance from the subject, honoring the gravity of the events that have touched him, teaching us the cause behind the effect. He invites—never drags—the reader along on his perpetual search for a sense of home, feeding him or her images and flashes of memory that reveal where Cvencek has been, where he is, and where he hopes to be. Cvencek shows—he doesn’t tell—and we are compelled to feel as a result (or at least imagine).
Cvencek’s poems—testimonies, really—offer up a clarity around paradigms of war (for the uninitiated) that is curious in its irony, revealing silence and boredom as bitter fruits from the harvest and the hard adaptability of human minds and spirits trapped in hostile environments. One gets the sense that Cvencek has looked into the black heart of man and will never be able to “unsee” again, tinting the lens he views the world through, leaving him forever open to signs and portents that herald the dark return of the familiar—the poet becoming the prophet.
There is always a sense of the poet’s dis-ease in his poems, but the tension, the images, the memories remind; they don’t haunt. Perhaps, Cvencek needs to look backward to extrapolate the sweet from the bitter, home from conflict. Perhaps, anyone who has walked in his shoes must keep one foot in the past and the other firmly planted here in the present to keep vigilant, prepared, proactive. In Cvencek’s own words. “generalized trauma and/undiagnosed PTSD/are a powerful/cocktail/the hangover can last/for decades” (from “500-WORD D.E.I. STATEMENT”). The war is over, true, but one still gets the sense that Cvencek (like the reader) is waiting for the next bomb to drop, radio static and nervous anticipation occupying the spaces between his pages.
As with our own narratives, there is a tonal shift toward the end of PTSD Martini, a kind of sagacity that only comes from seeing some shit and living to tell about it. While not necessarily the strongest of the collection, as a whole, the poems feel organic, necessary—proof order from chaos is achievable—especially so in “The Craziest,” “The Odds That Aren’t,” and “A Pause”. Cvencek’s approach is observational, erudite, and touched by philosophical clarity. The poet has endured, his lessons have been learned, and now he’s come down from the mountain to share his fire.
Dario Cvencek’s debut poetry collection PTSD Martini is more than a work about trauma and recovery (as labeling it so hardly does it justice). Cvencek’s poems not only guide the reader through the chaos and ruins of his external world, they reveal a hero’s journey across an internal landscape, fraught with irony and sharp edges, aching for an elusive escape that lies just beyond reach. Reprieve isn’t found at the bottom of a glass but from memories and recollections that have left their indelible marks upon his psyche, not numbing him to the present but leaving him—and the reader—ever vigilant for the next strike. Cvencek delivers on multiple levels, offering his readers a stranger among the familiar, a modern-day Odysseus navigating a cruel world in a seemingly unending search for home, and a sage with the kind of wisdom that only comes from seeing too much too soon. PTSD Martini will leave its readers shaken and very much stirred. Well worth bellying up to the bar for, indeed.
BIO: David Estringel is a Xicanx writer, Professor of English, and EIC at The Argyle Literary Magazine and Blood+Honey with words at The Opiate, Cowboy Jamboree, Dreich, Mythic Picnic, Literary Heist, Street Cake, The Milk House, BULL, The Hooghly Review, Drunk Monkeys, The Daily Drunk, and The Honest Ulsterman. David has published seven poetry/hybrid collections, six poetry chapbooks, and one co-authored novel Escaping Emily through Thirty West Publishing House. Connect with David on X @The_Booky_Man, Instagram @david_estringel, and his website www.davidestringel.com.