Reviews

2/50
second book of 2023

“I hate these country” I scream and
their eyes shine with rain and fog, because
at last I’m using the accent of the homeland,
at last I’m a homelandsexual and I will never go away
from them.

Cool title. Very chihuahua anxiety inducing writing. It’s a compliment, I think.

shanviolinlove's review against another edition

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5.0

Clever and creative, Patricia Lockwood summons a storehouse of ideas and images in each of her poems, calling into question topics of sexuality, family relationships, gender, our environment, to name a few. Each poem tells a story with a charged, yet conversational language that is as accessible as it is inviting. This collection includes her famous "Rape Joke" poem, along with poems that explore the birthing of American poetry by gender-exchanging Whitman and Dickinson, dolphin-girls whose overly sexualized bodies mature, a meta poem that explores women in war and ultimately a brother whose story hijacks the poem--"List of Cross Dressing Soldiers" was so arresting, so rich in word-play and imagery, that I stopped my husband in the middle of what he was doing and said, "You have to listen to this." Patricia Lockwood's poems are like that, grabbing the reader in the middle of what he or she is doing and saying, "You have to listen to this."

foggy_rosamund's review against another edition

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3.0

Appearing as long blocks, Lockwood's poems are carefully structured and full of internal rhymes and assonance. Though her language is casual, this belies the evident craft and intention that has gone into each piece. Often using surprising titles or shocking language, such as vocabulary from the world of porn, it's easy to see these as performance poems, though they are also arresting on the page. The work is full of tension, pace and fury, and each poem is gripping. This is an impressive collection: Lockwood's work has gone viral online, and she has been published in some of the biggest poetry magazines, and her voice is widely recognised: it's easy to see why. She is fiercely intelligent, imaginative, and can turn the most unlikely image into something beautiful or moving. Poems such as "An Animorph Enters the Doggie-Dog World", or "The Whole World Gets Together and Gangbangs a Deer" can surprise the reader not with their brutality but with their poignancy. "Rape Joke" was an online sensation, and it's the first piece of Lockwood's I encountered. The narrator of the poem discusses her rape by a family friend at the age of nineteen, and deconstructs the idea of rape as something that is joked about, and looks at the violent misogyny of society, at victim blaming, and at the way humour can be our only defense. It's not hard to see why this poem was so popular: bold and strident in tone, it also subtly captures many different aspects of rape culture, and creates something that both sympathises with, and empowers, the victims of rape. Overall, I think Lockwood is an excellent writer, but at times I struggled with this collection because the tone is unwavering, and while each poem works on its own, as a whole the pieces seem to fight one another, and it's a little like trying to balance an armful of ferrets, all of whom are attacking one another (something I have done, and I have the scars to prove it!). I found reading this collection exhausting, and I longed for the more measured and intimate tone of Lockwood's memoir, Priestdaddy. All that being said, Lockwood is clearly an important voice. She may be the voice of my generation, the oft-maligned Millenials, and if that's the case, then I am proud to have her.

sb1119's review

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challenging reflective medium-paced

5.0

editrixie's review against another edition

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5.0

Patricia Lockwood is my spirit animal.

jeremiglio's review against another edition

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2.0

I don't know who the audience for this is, but it's not me.

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