Reviews

The Small Door of Your Death by Sheryl St. Germain

lyss_cypher's review

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dark emotional sad fast-paced

5.0

hayleybroderick's review

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

3.75

dracoaestas's review

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4.0

An incredible experience. Sheryl St. Germain captures grief and loss so vividly and painfully (I find one of the back-cover blurbs especially accurate: Tim Seibles says that she attempts to “look straight into the eyes of Loss without blinking”). As heart-wrenching as this book is, it’s also very brave. She spends a lot of time with her loss.

In particular, I’m interested in the theme of identity and nonhuman environment, how we entangle those together. It’s a sort of subplot that comes up in several of St. Germain’s poems. She and others relate themselves, especially physically, to the natural world around them in illuminating, striking ways. I loved the way St. Germain explored embodiment and environment and identity, how she dove into all the overlaps and layers of those concepts in such a physical, beautiful way.
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