Reviews

Ghost of by Diana Khoi Nguyen

swamp_witch's review

challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

5.0

sierrafroggy's review

emotional reflective

4.0

psukrainets's review

challenging dark reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Suicide

elainarkk's review

emotional reflective fast-paced

5.0

I love Diana Khoi Nguyen's poetry like I have never loved poetry before. Her implementation of enjambment, juxtaposition, word choice, and repetition, among other poetic devices are truly to be admired from a reader standpoint as well as a writer standpoint. This is a collection I will cherish and read again and again.  

lavagurl's review

5.0

Holy shit. Ok so I’m a student at the University of Pittsburgh and I got the opportunity to meet Diana and she’s incredible. I felt like this collection about grief really spoke to me and she even invented a type of form like what??!! She stays true to her audience and I’m really grateful as an Asian American poet to have her in the community to have as a mentor/guide.

brice_mo's review

4.0

I really loved this, particularly in conversation with its successor, Root Fractures.

Both books have similar subject matter, but I was struck by how the shapelessness of the grief that originates in this collection is clarified in Diana Khoi Nguyen's next book.

Perhaps loss cannot be healed, but it can be matured.

crownofsage's review

fast-paced

5.0

bycath's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Suicide and Grief

aldoaguirreg's review

3.0

Honestly, I hate giving this book 3 stars, because I weirdly feel like it’s on me as an ESL reader that I couldn’t get some of the grief and ideas the author is trying to portray. Almost like when you’re at a table and someone tells a joke and everybody laughs and you kinda got it but not enough to give that full belly laughter?

I did appreciate the visual innovations by the author. And some of the text were beautiful indeed, I just know they didn’t fully land with me.

I think I’ll revisit it in the future.

chamomiledaydreams's review

4.0

This is a very beautiful and haunting poetry collection. I love the way it combines photography and poetry, morphing the words into shapes that force readers to slow down and reason through the passage.