Reviews

Ordinary Beast by Nicole Sealey

jesshooves's review

Lines from the poem “in defense of candelabra with heads”...

“A hundred years from now...
May someone happen upon the question
in question. May that lucky someone be black
and so far removed from the word lynch
that she be dumbfounded by its meaning.
May her imagination, not her memory, run wild.”

artemiscat's review

and !

nightlightmoon's review

challenging reflective relaxing medium-paced

4.5

faloodamooda's review

reflective medium-paced

3.5

mastery here, but wish us wa s’more compelling 

jesshuang24's review

dark emotional fast-paced

3.5

ubepandesol's review

What better way to close out my Sealey Challenge 2023 than by reading a book written by the challenge creator herself? I'm glad I participated this year; next year I'll surely plan ahead better and inundate myself with more re-reads than new finds, and this is one of the books I'm looking forward to re-reading~

silasburke's review

4.0

Really just good poetry tbh. Would’ve been 5/5 but the very first poem’s first lines seemed homophobic to me lmao? Kind of jarringly so. But otherwise, powerful and well-done. I would read more of her work. When I read “candelabra with heads” I honestly gasped when I saw the poem start to reverse around itself at its center.

Favorite poems: a violence, candelabra with heads, hysterical strength, the first person who will life to be one hundred and fifty years old has already been born, heretofore unuttered, even the gods, object permanence

ladytstanz's review against another edition

fast-paced

4.0

songsandsonnets's review

reflective medium-paced

3.0

caramels's review

4.0

“Allow me this
luxury. Give me tonight to cut
and salt the open. Give me a shovel
to uproot the mandrake and listen
for its scream. Give me a face that toils
so closely with stone, it is itself
stone. I promise to enter the flesh again.
I promise to circle to ascend.
I promise to be happy tomorrow.”