Reviews

A Wife Is a Hope Chest: Poems by Kiki Petrosino, Christine Brandel

courtneyfalling's review against another edition

4.0

I didn't know what to expect of this collection, but it surprised and impressed me. These strange, imagined scenes, like fairytales, are compelling. "The Blackmailer's Lesson" is by far the best poem here; I've already read it countless times and love how it progresses around and within itself, far from simple. Others I enjoyed include "A Wife Is a Hope Chest," "Biting the Rind," "The Worst Thing in the World That Could Have Happened," and "Fingers and Bones." I do think the collection could do without some of the shorter poems, and Brandel could have been a bit more careful in her handling of abuse/sex themes. I somehow feel as though this collection does in poetry what Tallahassee by the Mountain Goats does in music, showing the raw and sometimes unforgivable parts of a relationship's dissolution, everyone realizing the extent of the horrible things they can feel and do. A friend once said that the endings of relationships you deeply valued can cause you to lose your dignity, to look in the face how far you would go to hold onto someone even when it's futile, even when you're begging, even when you're compromising so much of who you thought you were. I kept thinking about that with this collection, what that actually means, what that actually looks like, and, crucially, how we overcome it and ask for better, ask for what we really deserve.