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mxunsmiley's review
4.0
I had been eager to read their debut collection since reading their poems from the anthology We Want It All a while back. They are so deft at wordplay and reimagining of poetic forms; I enjoyed their way of transforming certain words from one phrase to the next. Some poems are direct and curt, the experience of which I felt cut clean through me, and others span across the book like a journey. I particularly liked their allusion to Scheherazade's storytelling. I only wasn't a fan of 2 poems, hence my 4 star rating--I was that unenthusiastic about them.
lonelyasfranz's review
1.0
Can someone please tell me what the cover art is supposed to be? Surely it isn’t actually a bedpan.
gremlinpride's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
5.0
msiyleen's review
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.0
katnortonwriter's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.75
I see a fair number of people saying that they don’t like poetry and then leaving low ratings (not just here, but on poetry collections in general) which is a shame. I think some of these reviews do this book a disservice.
Elements of this book reminded me of Ocean Vuong’s “Time Is a Mother,” which I read earlier this year… there’s a specific type of bone-deep pain in both of their styles, and a structural parallel of interlocking poems that keep coming back to the same central theme/story/image. Both poets are Vietnamese, but while this is not the reason I connected the collections in my mind—there are a surprising number of overlapping themes that I haven’t seen a lot of other poets tackle.
With Tran’s collection particularly, we are told the same story half a dozen times, perhaps, but in different ways and with different emphases, slightly reframed each time. I usually like to read chapbooks over the course of several days, picking up a poem here and there, but the structure of this really works better if you give yourself a chance to catch the repeating themes and phrases.
Parts of this are so raw, and others are very precise and practiced. More than most other collections, I feel like poem order played a huge role in my understanding. This isn’t just a collection of poems, it’s a memory being played and replayed, reframed, reevaluated. Even the poems that are ostensibly about something else build on each other. Content warning: s*xual violence and SA are core themes of this story—although never glorified, this may be difficult for some readers to engage with.
Tl;dr solid collection, will read again.
Elements of this book reminded me of Ocean Vuong’s “Time Is a Mother,” which I read earlier this year… there’s a specific type of bone-deep pain in both of their styles, and a structural parallel of interlocking poems that keep coming back to the same central theme/story/image. Both poets are Vietnamese, but while this is not the reason I connected the collections in my mind—there are a surprising number of overlapping themes that I haven’t seen a lot of other poets tackle.
With Tran’s collection particularly, we are told the same story half a dozen times, perhaps, but in different ways and with different emphases, slightly reframed each time. I usually like to read chapbooks over the course of several days, picking up a poem here and there, but the structure of this really works better if you give yourself a chance to catch the repeating themes and phrases.
Parts of this are so raw, and others are very precise and practiced. More than most other collections, I feel like poem order played a huge role in my understanding. This isn’t just a collection of poems, it’s a memory being played and replayed, reframed, reevaluated. Even the poems that are ostensibly about something else build on each other. Content warning: s*xual violence and SA are core themes of this story—although never glorified, this may be difficult for some readers to engage with.
Tl;dr solid collection, will read again.