ceah_reads's reviews
406 reviews

Unfuck Your Work: Makin' Paper Without Losing Your Mind or Selling Your Soul by Faith G. Harper

informative medium-paced

A great intro, which feels geared to high school or college students. For the rest of us? I think we'll want more.
My full review: https://essentiallyanerd.wordpress.com/2023/09/10/a-very-short-review-of-unfuck-your-work-makin-paper-without-losing-your-mind-or-selling-your-soul/

Magnetic Storms by Lyudmyla Diadchenko

adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

There's nothing predictable about Magnetic Storms. It's funny and clever and beautiful, the sort of layered poetry that will be as new and fresh with every re-read as it was with the first.  My full review: https://essentiallyanerd.wordpress.com/2023/08/31/the-sealey-challenge-magnetic-storms/

Knockout by Sarah MacLean

5.0

Sing Me a Lesser Wound by Junious Ward

challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

A fascinating, multilayered collection interrogating masculinity, tradition, and loss. My full review: https://essentiallyanerd.wordpress.com/2023/08/19/the-sealey-challenge-sing-me-a-lesser-wound/

I Will Pass Even to Acheron by Amanda Newell

I Will Pass Even to Acheron is, I think, important poetry. It will make its reader think about the lives of those who survive war, regardless of the “side” on which they stand; it will drive home the horrors carried home. But, for readers like me and so many others, it will also bring up questions of ethics, will drive home matters of religiosity that often go by the wayside. And, always, it will humanize carnage. My full review: https://essentiallyanerd.wordpress.com/2023/08/02/the-sealey-challenge-i-will-pass-even-to-acheron/

She, Self-Winding by Lưu Diệu Vân

challenging emotional

• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

There are parts of She, Self-Winding that are so funny I laughed; there are poems so sneakily bleak I almost cried, and poems so exquisite—like the titular “she, self-winding”—that I immediately read them all over again. This is an exquisite, sly, brilliant collection, each line carrying multiple meanings: a book that begs to be read again and again. My full review: https://essentiallyanerd.wordpress.com/2023/08/03/the-sealey-challenge-she-self-winding/

A Juror Must Fold In On Herself by Kathleen McClung

I never really expected to stumble across something in which the boredom and worry and loneliness of a sequestered jury turns into something almost magical, and it makes McClung’s work here with A Juror Must Turn In On Herself even more remarkable. This is truly an exquisite chapbook, on so many different levels. My full review: https://essentiallyanerd.wordpress.com/2023/08/04/the-sealey-challenge-a-juror-must-fold-in-on-herself/

Punishment by Nancy Miller Gomez

Punishment aches with questions too deep to answer in one short chapbook, or maybe ever. But I am so glad that Miller Gomez had the courage to write them, to remind us of humanity behind bars, and to remind us that surely something better is possible. My full review: https://essentiallyanerd.wordpress.com/2023/08/05/the-sealey-challenge-punishment/

wordtomydead by Sadé Powell

Will wordtomydead speak to me the next time I read it? I have no doubt it will. But I also think, next time, I will not concentrate quite so hard on making meaning of those words, but rather allow myself to swim through the images Powell has created here. My full review: https://essentiallyanerd.wordpress.com/2023/08/06/the-sealey-challenge-wordtomydead/

The Wishbone Dress by Cassandra J. Bruner

challenging emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Beautiful like an ache. My full review: https://essentiallyanerd.wordpress.com/2023/08/01/the-sealey-challenge-the-wishbone-dress/