ellierabenberg 's review for:

A Rebellion of Care: Poems and Essays by David Gate

2.75

lighthearted reflective fast-paced

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I struggled with this book - I almost DNFed but decided to skim through the last third to give a cohesive review. I was unfamiliar with Gate’s work, and while I found that the short essays that started each chapter were (mostly) compelling, the poetry fell short of expressing the ideas he seemed to wish to convey. For one, I felt there were simply too many poems. A lot was thrown in there that seemed like they could be casual instagram post poems, and didn’t need to take up the page space, so that the better poems were better highlighted. I truly think Gate has good intentions, and is politically aware, but some of the poems felt performative when next to other poems about avocado toast and band name puns. I think that Gate does feel inclined to raise awareness about political issues, but the essays felt more compelling to me than the poems themselves, which felt contrived. I think there is a collection of poems in here worth highlighting, but unfortunately it gets lost with the constant thematic jumps between not just chapters, but between the poems themselves.