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jadeelizaerrez's review against another edition
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
2.75
This collection just wasn’t for me. I didn’t connect with the style of poetry. Hirshfield has a simplistic style, but to me it felt half-baked and juvenile. There were some interesting ideas and a few glimmering images, but overall very mid.
katscribefever's review against another edition
3.0
Some of these stanzas felt so relatable that I was sure I'd read them wrong, while others were wholly unrecognizable to me. This collection felt like a lesson on the core of what poetry is in that it used language to make commonplace aspects of humanity beautiful.
cass393's review against another edition
4.0
A few of the poems in this collection I’ll probably come back to many times over. I love the way she taps into small sweet things and makes them feel immense and important.
sundayblues's review against another edition
2.0
many of the poems in this book become more mystical the more you read them, slowly becoming incantations to something unknown but ultimately this collection never delivers that gut wrenching, cathartic truth-telling moment that makes you slam the book down in elation or disgust—both acceptable reactions to hard-hitting, truth-seeking poetry.
wanderingrose's review against another edition
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
3.75
This book contains the sort of poetry that I'm convinced is trying to tell me something even as it's going well over my head. (As I suspect these things are often meant to, to be honest.) But these poems were littered & laced through with imagery so vivid I couldn't resist keeping on, and I'm not mad that I did. Not everything is meant to be understood after all, some things are just for us to feel or - more often than not - to know that we can.
tomhill's review against another edition
4.0
"You were born noble: a tree.
Caustics and acids changed you
to what you now are,
protective, stiff, almost weightless.
Both captive and guard,
your desire is to be frivolous, self-destructive,
undone and opened.
Your bright red necklace announces:
"Tear here."
Inside you, tobacco.
Inside you, peppermints, gingersnaps, gum.
You would not be found
wrapping a mattress or gun.
You were dictated into the world
by the muse of "it could be."
You were unlikely but useful,
so kept.
I include this rather long passage from the poem "Cellophane: An Assay" because I lack the ability to describe Hirshfield's poetry and do it justice. What's interesting about this particular poem is that if you ignore the title, Hirshfield could be writing about a person. There's an intimacy and beauty there, and then you remember she is writing about cellophane. If she writes this way about an inanimate object, just imagine how she writes about people. Also, I like to pretend this poem is about a person. I feel as if I should read this collection at least once more because like any poetry worth reading, this work has depths which could be further delved. The imagery and the inventiveness of the language are wonderful.
Caustics and acids changed you
to what you now are,
protective, stiff, almost weightless.
Both captive and guard,
your desire is to be frivolous, self-destructive,
undone and opened.
Your bright red necklace announces:
"Tear here."
Inside you, tobacco.
Inside you, peppermints, gingersnaps, gum.
You would not be found
wrapping a mattress or gun.
You were dictated into the world
by the muse of "it could be."
You were unlikely but useful,
so kept.
I include this rather long passage from the poem "Cellophane: An Assay" because I lack the ability to describe Hirshfield's poetry and do it justice. What's interesting about this particular poem is that if you ignore the title, Hirshfield could be writing about a person. There's an intimacy and beauty there, and then you remember she is writing about cellophane. If she writes this way about an inanimate object, just imagine how she writes about people. Also, I like to pretend this poem is about a person. I feel as if I should read this collection at least once more because like any poetry worth reading, this work has depths which could be further delved. The imagery and the inventiveness of the language are wonderful.