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A review by lauren_miller
Urban Rose by Helle Gade
challenging
dark
emotional
medium-paced
3.0
Thank you to Netgalley and Butterdragons Publishing for the ARC opportunity.
The things I loved about this poetry collection:
1. The portrayal and personifications of chronic illness and disability. Many of them resonated with me on a personal level, and I think that someone blessedly unfamiliar with these experiences would find it a helpful and eye-opening reading experience.
2. The cosmic and natural metaphors. In particular, I really enjoyed the employment of the stars and frost as emotional and physical sensations and/or manifestations.
3. The very visceral emotions the author has shared. Even in what I assume is a translation (the author is Danish), the emotions of anger and angst in particular really came through.
Things I didn't love:
1. The lack of punctuation. I can usually deal with this, but for some reason, the lack of punctuation really hindered the experience of the poems for me; I sometimes struggled to follow where one thought ended and another began.
2. The plethora of spelling mistakes. Unfortunately, these errors were numerous and definitely took me out of the emotional experience of the poems in which they appeared.
3. This could be a translation issue, but some of the word choices seemed very... dramatic? Almost theatrical, at times? I found when the author was talking about themself and their pain experiences, this wasn't an issue; it more so applied to the general works addressing society and nature and such.
Overall, I did enjoy this collection, but I'm not sure I would recommend unless someone was in need of disability rep; in that case, I think this collection is particularly strong, so I would.
The things I loved about this poetry collection:
1. The portrayal and personifications of chronic illness and disability. Many of them resonated with me on a personal level, and I think that someone blessedly unfamiliar with these experiences would find it a helpful and eye-opening reading experience.
2. The cosmic and natural metaphors. In particular, I really enjoyed the employment of the stars and frost as emotional and physical sensations and/or manifestations.
3. The very visceral emotions the author has shared. Even in what I assume is a translation (the author is Danish), the emotions of anger and angst in particular really came through.
Things I didn't love:
1. The lack of punctuation. I can usually deal with this, but for some reason, the lack of punctuation really hindered the experience of the poems for me; I sometimes struggled to follow where one thought ended and another began.
2. The plethora of spelling mistakes. Unfortunately, these errors were numerous and definitely took me out of the emotional experience of the poems in which they appeared.
3. This could be a translation issue, but some of the word choices seemed very... dramatic? Almost theatrical, at times? I found when the author was talking about themself and their pain experiences, this wasn't an issue; it more so applied to the general works addressing society and nature and such.
Overall, I did enjoy this collection, but I'm not sure I would recommend unless someone was in need of disability rep; in that case, I think this collection is particularly strong, so I would.