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katie_l21's review
2.0
The Smallest of Bones is a strange poetry collection, split into different sections named after various bones. I did not really enjoy this, as it was strangely formatted, and hard to tell where one poem ended and another began.
kleonard's review
5.0
This is a visceral, intelligent, outstanding work full of forward momentum and the grabbing of ideas and the body and wrestling with conventions and finally kicking them out the door. It's a collection of poetry inspired by parts and places of the body, and about body, and being a woman, and loving women and their bodies, and rejecting the status quo and the male gaze and grappling with self-image. I want to give copies to every woman I know, and I want to teach it in high schools, and I want everyone talking about it, and I want to read more by this author right now.
knittyreader's review
3.0
I love poetry with a darker twist. That said, I am one of those people who failed to connect with the author's writing style. For this dark type of poems it was too simple to be fully to my taste.
mpolcul's review
5.0
Walrath’s self-proclaimed weird poetry is collected in this book and is not broken down by topic but by bone.
We follow Walrath up and down the skeletal form of someone dealing with a variety of traumas and insecurities. What stood out most to me were relationships studded with abuse and body dysmorphia/acceptance.
From hardships to hope, any fan of poetry will find themselves engrossed in “The Smallest of Bones”!
In more personal thoughts, as someone who’s always enjoyed writing and reading poetry, I found lots to appreciate in this collection.
What I noticed first is that Walrath constructed the table of contents in such a way that it reads as a poem itself. I love that you can easily see how these poems fit together in the collection, but it is also clear that they can stand alone.
I’m also a fan of visual poetry—seeing how putting words in different places, and breaking lines in different points changed meaning (or amplifies it)! I’m sure I’ll be reading and re-reading a few times to truly see the different meanings Walrath wrote.
—Even Further (Personal) Thoughts—
I couldn’t leave this post without discussing my own obsession with a book like this. I am a funeral director (intern) by trade, but I first studied anthropology, with a focus in biology. Basically, I love bones.
For years, I’ve been obsessed with the stories bones can tell. I even did a project based on Lynda Barry’s “One! Hundred! Demons!” called “206 Bones” where I wrote vignettes based on my life that followed various bones in my body.
I loved to see a similar (albeit very different) idea played out and published here! I’m in love with this book! ❤️
We follow Walrath up and down the skeletal form of someone dealing with a variety of traumas and insecurities. What stood out most to me were relationships studded with abuse and body dysmorphia/acceptance.
From hardships to hope, any fan of poetry will find themselves engrossed in “The Smallest of Bones”!
In more personal thoughts, as someone who’s always enjoyed writing and reading poetry, I found lots to appreciate in this collection.
What I noticed first is that Walrath constructed the table of contents in such a way that it reads as a poem itself. I love that you can easily see how these poems fit together in the collection, but it is also clear that they can stand alone.
I’m also a fan of visual poetry—seeing how putting words in different places, and breaking lines in different points changed meaning (or amplifies it)! I’m sure I’ll be reading and re-reading a few times to truly see the different meanings Walrath wrote.
—Even Further (Personal) Thoughts—
I couldn’t leave this post without discussing my own obsession with a book like this. I am a funeral director (intern) by trade, but I first studied anthropology, with a focus in biology. Basically, I love bones.
For years, I’ve been obsessed with the stories bones can tell. I even did a project based on Lynda Barry’s “One! Hundred! Demons!” called “206 Bones” where I wrote vignettes based on my life that followed various bones in my body.
I loved to see a similar (albeit very different) idea played out and published here! I’m in love with this book! ❤️
ohcorrica's review
4.0
This is a beautiful book of poetry. If you want something that will make you think, feel, and be inspired read this book! I enjoyed the structure of the book going through bones. My favorite poem was "Sternum."
soulsow's review
1.0
I did'nt connect with it at all, it felt blurry and confusing. It tried to be deep talking about some things but were only grazing the surface and very vague. The only thing I could get is that it was dark. There was a good idea though, it has potential.
zj5's review
3.0
I’ll start by saying that while this isn’t my favourite style of poetry, I was surprised to find myself returning again and again to some of these miniscule poems.
The Smallest of Bones is filled with ideas on gender, sex, sexuality, and feminism. Each brought into brief existence through scant, unpunctuated lines. Most are affecting but others feel better suited for inspirational Facebook posts. They’re not bad but the brevity and structure can too easily distract from the intended meaning.
On the other hand, the consistency of theme is to be admired. Walrath begins each section to a rundown on a particular human bone and then expands on it with condensed emotion and minute anatomical imagery. We travel down from the cranium to the mandible and then the sternum all the way down and back around to the spine before stopping at the temporal bones at the ears. It’s as much a tour of heartbreak and existence as it is an anatomy textbook.
I don’t know that I would classify much of it as horror but there’s definitely a macabre feeling throughout the book. It’s a quick read but one that, when it connects, will have you flipping back to your favourites.
ARC courtesy of NetGalley
The Smallest of Bones is filled with ideas on gender, sex, sexuality, and feminism. Each brought into brief existence through scant, unpunctuated lines. Most are affecting but others feel better suited for inspirational Facebook posts. They’re not bad but the brevity and structure can too easily distract from the intended meaning.
On the other hand, the consistency of theme is to be admired. Walrath begins each section to a rundown on a particular human bone and then expands on it with condensed emotion and minute anatomical imagery. We travel down from the cranium to the mandible and then the sternum all the way down and back around to the spine before stopping at the temporal bones at the ears. It’s as much a tour of heartbreak and existence as it is an anatomy textbook.
I don’t know that I would classify much of it as horror but there’s definitely a macabre feeling throughout the book. It’s a quick read but one that, when it connects, will have you flipping back to your favourites.
ARC courtesy of NetGalley
twilliamson's review
5.0
The Smallest of Bones has the biggest of hearts when it comes to poetry, and Holly Lyn Walrath has to be one of the finest voices I've encountered in this style of dark poetry. In every poem, Holly manages to weave a familiar emotional yearning, a reaction to human fragility that seems to infect every living system of our beings, so that there can be little discernment between love and pain, desire and destruction, agency and enslavement.
Walrath's poems are packed with symbolic significance, in spite of some of their brevity. Her concision and consistency in voice pitches her work into higher elevation, even as her subject matter remains rooted somewhere in the guts, shivering in the spine or along the mandible of a body.
I love this collection, and it hits the human, emotional beats I desperately crave from poetry. She delivers a startling wit, a righteousness in pointing out injustices especially as it comes to sex and agency, and a collection of poetry that acts as a study of human fragility that cries out to be read.
So read it.
Walrath's poems are packed with symbolic significance, in spite of some of their brevity. Her concision and consistency in voice pitches her work into higher elevation, even as her subject matter remains rooted somewhere in the guts, shivering in the spine or along the mandible of a body.
I love this collection, and it hits the human, emotional beats I desperately crave from poetry. She delivers a startling wit, a righteousness in pointing out injustices especially as it comes to sex and agency, and a collection of poetry that acts as a study of human fragility that cries out to be read.
So read it.
chasingholden's review
5.0
"Hiding our hearts is easy when we have so many bones"
"A man
once asked how I got so thin
I told him I was made of glass"
The Smallest of Bones by Holly Lyn Walrath is an amazing, beautiful, and powerful collection! With shards of bone and glass I felt safe to curl up between my ribcage right alongside the little ball of pain I've lodged there for safe keeping, and truly explore myself, my experiences, and the world in relation to everything from sexuality to religion to the darkness that comes along with being alive.
Perhaps it is because I myself have always used bone's and the human body in my own private writing to express various feelings I was forcefully drawn to this collection for word one. I literally could not put it down (I tried, lasted all of five minutes) and I felt a strange rush of comfort and connection with the words so perfectly chosen by Holly Lyn Walrath. It is a collection that I will be purchasing for my own collection as soon as I possibly can, for there is a spot on my shelf screaming to be filled with this book and only this book. I have been searching for a collection like this for so long, I feel like I can finally breathe having finally found The Smallest of Bones which far exceeded anything I had hoped to find.
Highly recommended!
Thank you so much to Netgalley, and of course Holly Lyn Walrath and publishers for granting me an ecopy in exchange for my honest opinion. I can happily and truthfully lend my opinion.
"A man
once asked how I got so thin
I told him I was made of glass"
The Smallest of Bones by Holly Lyn Walrath is an amazing, beautiful, and powerful collection! With shards of bone and glass I felt safe to curl up between my ribcage right alongside the little ball of pain I've lodged there for safe keeping, and truly explore myself, my experiences, and the world in relation to everything from sexuality to religion to the darkness that comes along with being alive.
Perhaps it is because I myself have always used bone's and the human body in my own private writing to express various feelings I was forcefully drawn to this collection for word one. I literally could not put it down (I tried, lasted all of five minutes) and I felt a strange rush of comfort and connection with the words so perfectly chosen by Holly Lyn Walrath. It is a collection that I will be purchasing for my own collection as soon as I possibly can, for there is a spot on my shelf screaming to be filled with this book and only this book. I have been searching for a collection like this for so long, I feel like I can finally breathe having finally found The Smallest of Bones which far exceeded anything I had hoped to find.
Highly recommended!
Thank you so much to Netgalley, and of course Holly Lyn Walrath and publishers for granting me an ecopy in exchange for my honest opinion. I can happily and truthfully lend my opinion.
larissalee's review
4.0
The poems in each section of this book read like one larger piece, while also standing alone as glimpses into someone else's story. It was a refreshing and interesting way to approach a poetry collection, and the poems bled smoothly out of section introductions that described the bones in focus: cranium, mandible, sternum, and so forth. The mix of technical detail and poetry gave the poems that followed each intro greater depth.
(Note: my ebook ARC edition didn't include any art, and that's the only thing I think this collection was missing. Between a lack of formatting to truly separate the poem and a lack of anatomical art to go with each bone-themed section, I feel like they're missing out on an opportunity to create a collection full of aesthetic beauty to go with the poems themselves.)
(Note: my ebook ARC edition didn't include any art, and that's the only thing I think this collection was missing. Between a lack of formatting to truly separate the poem and a lack of anatomical art to go with each bone-themed section, I feel like they're missing out on an opportunity to create a collection full of aesthetic beauty to go with the poems themselves.)