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gabbygarcia's review
emotional
hopeful
fast-paced
2.75
I had such high hopes for this collection. I’ve read a few stunning poems by Maggie Smith online and was looking forward to more. I’m sad to say I did not love this one. Many of the poems felt unfinished, over-explained, or plain unsuccessful—especially her political/news-related poems. They were jarring because they made the whole collection feel disjointed and without a throughline. Even worse, I found the metaphors and comparisons in her news-poems downright insulting, or, at best, pretty cringy. Rather than speak to anything with any depth or add to the conversation at all, they speak instead to irrelevant personal guilt and questions the narrator is unable to answer herself. All of which I’m not particularly interested in, to be honest!
There were a handful of wonderful poems. For a page, every so often, I’d think to myself, “She’s brilliant!!” My favorites were Goldenrod, Lacrimae, For My Next Trick, During Lockdown I Let the Dog Sleep in My Bed Again, and At the End of My Marriage, I Think About Something My Daughter Said About Trees. She's without a doubt at her best when she writes about her divorce, her children, motherhood, birth, and the environment she lives in--she writes about these topics so beautifully, with nuance and care, and brings in the most unexpected metaphors and details. Top-notch writing here, but unfortunately the good ones only added up to about a dozen out of 50-some poems :(
Content Warnings
Minor: Child death, Gun violence, Kidnapping, Blood, Death, Hate crime, Mass/school shootings, and Police brutality
Divorceelliotvanz's review
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
Maggie Smith returns with a new poetry collection that finds the sublime within the mundane. Smith explores larger issues of memory, mortality, and humanity through the lens of the ordinary, like goldenrods at the edge of a road. Empathetic and lovely in equal measure.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Dementia, Grief, Gun violence, Kidnapping, and Mass/school shootings
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