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definebookish's review
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
As a collection, My Darling From the Lions feels at once deeply personal and firmly rooted in pop culture, exploring themes of sexuality, the body, cultural inheritance, Black identity, family, and religion.
There are 45 or so poems here, grouped into three sections; Open, A Lineage of Wigs, and Dolls. The majority stand alone, but there’s interplay between many, too. Sometimes an image from one poem will be echoed in the next, or several poems later, showing it to the reader again from a different angle. Sometimes an image appears once, but once is enough – the power of that once lingers throughout and beyond the pages of the collection.
Some of the poems here make for difficult reading. My favourite is ‘Bike’, I think, for the lines ‘What doe would’ve worn fishnets / to a house party full of hunters’ and ‘Run! / In these hooves? / Through an estate / built like Tetris?’ Other standouts are Black Princess! Black Princess! – about the scrutiny of Meghan Markle – and The Garden, about an unplanned pregnancy.
Often intimate, sometimes poignant, sometimes witty, sometimes shocking. This is a vulnerable collection, and a bold one.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child abuse, Sexual assault, Cancer, and Racism
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