Shira is my favorite poet on the planet and this collection did not disappoint. I cannot say enough good things about this book and the necessity of you reading it and bearing witness to her story told with such bravery, vulnerability, honesty, bold imagery, and clear crispness. I will be recommending this to so many people for a very long time.

This Book of poetry will always be in my top 5. Love love love! I read this book in my college class and it was definitely one of my favorites of the year. Odes to Lithium is deeply personal (it is cognizant of Erlichman's bipolar disorder) but written in a way that makes the reader feel connected, not specifically towards Erlichman but instead towards the words that are written.

Apparently it's a thing for students to memorize poems? I never had to do during my time in public school; and I always wondered what my poem I would have chose to memorize.
Now I know the poem would be 'Baby and I'. I think of that poem all the time, and I think that's what makes poetry so enticing and comforting. The poems are a 10/10, and the art of the book is beautiful yet simple that I found myself constantly going back to look at the cover page.

This is a beautiful and varied poetry collection that discusses the intricacies of mental illness and treatment for it. The poems are each individual and address this theme, including public perception, family, hospitalization, and as the title indicates, medication. Overall, this present a moving collection that help de-stigmatize mental illness.

Maybe a 3.5? But I’m thinking a full 4.
I’m a baby poetry reader. I tend to get a little nervous around the experimental, anything that pushes the bounds of this form I already find a bit hard—though rewarding!—to grasp. But man, Shira Erlichman blew all that way.
In this collection, she tears apart (and rebuilds) form in order to best portray her experience with bipolar. In this way, the forms (and the unique, metaphors the poems contain) echo the sticky, puzzling form of her illness.
Sometimes, I got a little lost with what Erlichman was doing, but man, when it worked, it worked.
I especially enjoyed Pink Noise—where illness is likened to the false song of a seashell; On This End— where Erlichman writes letters between her and her mother in reverse; and Portrait of a Release— which is a more straight-forward narrative about her release from a mental health facility.
The book also has gorgeous illustrations!

As someone who found therapy to be not enough and has been on SSRIs for close to a decade now, I was immediately drawn to this book of poems. While I am not bipolar, the terrain Erlichman navigates - particularly the grappling with the stigma of mental illness - felt very familiar nonetheless. The versatility/volatility of form and voice both makes sense and allows for elements of surprise as you turn the pages. I am drawn to letters-as-poems and poetry that nakedly expresses formative experiences, and we get a taste of that here alongside the descriptions of mental hospitals and side effects of the medication. When a friend tells the narrator, "No offense but personally I could never take drugs," I felt that. In the same line, the narrator is quick to point out how the friend is on birth control and her third cup of coffee already. This scene perfectly illustrates navigating a world that still plainly refuses to recognize the legitimacy of mental illness as an illness, and the book as whole articulates the difficulties connecting to that world.