Wound from the Mouth of a Wound

Description

A Minnesota Book Award Finalist in Poetry A CLMP Firecracker Award Finalist in Poetry “Some girls are not made,” torrin a. greathouse writes, “but spring from the dirt.” Guided by a devastatingly precise hand, Wound from the Mouth of a Wound —selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil as the winner of the 2020 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry—challenges a canon that decides what shades of beauty deserve to live in a poem. greathouse celebrates “buckteeth & ulcer.” She odes the pulp of a bedsore. She argues that the vestigial is not devoid of meaning, and in kinetic and vigorous language, she honors bodies the world too often wants dead. These poems ache, but they do not surrender. They bleed, but they spit the blood in our eyes. Their imagery pulses on the page, fractal and fluid, blooming in a medley of forms: broken essays, haibun born of erasure, a sonnet meant to be read in the mirror. greathouse’s poetry demands more of language and those who wield it. “I’m still learning not to let a stranger speak / me into a funeral.” Concrete and evocative, Wound from the Mouth of a Wound is a testament to persistence, even when the body is not allowed to thrive. greathouse—elegant, vicious, “a one-girl armageddon” draped in crushed velvet—teaches us that fragility is not synonymous with flaw. Review: Intensely Brilliant - Read this phenomenal poetry book! Review: Not a fan, honestly. - I randomly found this on Libby first but rented the audiobook on Hoopla. As always, my honest thoughts and opinions are directly below. I can't STAND the narrator's voice. It grated on my nerves but I can't say why. I don't know if I was just listening to it on the wrong day or if I was just in a foul mood when I listened to it. I really don't know. I just wish I had read the ebook instead. I'm not the type of person who normally enjoys poetry but I do enjoy it from time to time, depending on the subject matter. This collection just wasn't for me, though. I can honestly say that I'm not the target audience. I will say that I'm part of the LGBTQ+ community (I'm gender fluid) but sometimes LGBTQ-focused material doesn't call to me the way it may call to others. I don't know if it was the way I was raised or if I'm just not the target audience. I'm not saying you shouldn't try this collection but it's not my cup of tea. Just because I disliked it doesn't mean that you won't like it. I feel like my tastes in books these days seems to have evolved much further than I was expecting. Not that this is a bad thing, of course. I wanted so badly to enjoy this collection but the narrator's voice (the author themselves, mind you) just took me out of the experience. I'm sure if I read from the ebook, I'd enjoy it a lot more. The poetry isn't bad but it's the voice that kills me. Maybe I'm being too critical. (shrugs) Who knows? I'd honestly take my review with a grain of salt at this point since I've been a lot more critical about what I read lately. Maybe it's just me. I'm not really sure.