Scan barcode
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.
gabbygarcia's review
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Grief and Suicide
ari__s's review
5.0
Ghost Of is so different. Truly an exercise in turning uncontainable, inexplicable grief into something with form.
2000s's review
4.25
Feels like a prayer and a plea. Very abstract for me, I don't understand her writing until after reading some poems three times over, or even at all. But it commands my attention. A real gift made even better since I've seen the author talk and she's so insightful and kindhearted.
silasburke's review
2.0
This book missed for me, mostly for formatting/use of space reasons. I just didn’t get it, which happens with poetry sometimes!!
shanviolinlove's review
5.0
Heartbreaking and quieting. Diane Khoi Nguyen impresses upon you the problem of negative space that the dead occupy; the poems of her brother's suicide try to make sense (or show the futility of such attempts) to reconcile with such tangible absence. The content themselves are evocative, considering the shape and shapelessness of water, grief, empty houses within us; but she also shows this through spaces she carves (loved the line "this craving carves a cave") on the actual page with the gaps between lines and sentences. Most visually powerful of all are family photos in which the boy is cut out (he had cut himself out) and the ghostly shape of his absence draws the eye to it. Nguyen makes sense of this negative space by filling it with words, and then filling the backdrop of the photo with the brother-sized hole with words: a picture of the poet's endeavor to fill what would otherwise be left unspoken or unspeakable.