The Tragic Nature of Phantoms: A New Book by Collin J. Rae
A new collection of poetry and imagery from Collin J. Rae arrives early fall. The Tragic Nature of Phantoms will be released September 29, 2026, through Baroque Medusa Media.
Following Rae’s previous collections of poetry and visual work, The Tragic Nature of Phantoms brings his words and imagery together once again. This time in a book centered on what remains after relationships fracture, people disappear, and memories refuse to leave with them.
What happens when someone is gone, but their presence never really disappears?
About The Tragic Nature of Phantoms
The Tragic Nature of Phantoms by Collin J. Rae explores grief, anger, abandonment, memory, disconnection, and the emotional residue people leave behind in the aftermath. Across the collection, the idea of the “phantom” takes on many forms: a person who is no longer there, a relationship that continues to exist in memory, an old version of ourselves, or the lingering presence of something that ended without ever feeling completely finished.
Rae’s poetry is raw and confrontational, moving between rage, mourning, longing, resentment, self-destruction, and moments of reluctant acceptance. The collection repeatedly returns to disappearance and recurrence—the endless cycle of leaving, remembering, rebuilding, and finding that certain ghosts have followed us into whatever comes next. As Rae writes in the book’s opening, he sees writing as an act of “mental survival” and an attempt to purge the emotional weight that threatens to boil over.
The imagery carries that same sense of instability. Created by Rae, the figures throughout The Tragic Nature of Phantoms are fractured, distorted, partially erased, and reconstructed in vivid layers of color and texture. Faces remain visible but altered; bodies seem caught somewhere between appearing and disappearing. Paired with poems, the images turn the collection into a visual and written exploration of what it means to be haunted—not necessarily by the supernatural, but by people, memories, versions of ourselves, and endings that refuse to stay buried.
The Tragic Nature of Phantoms by Collin J. Rae will be released September 29, 2026.
Baroque Medusa 
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