This is one of those books that I feel like I didn’t completely understand, and I’m ok admitting that. There were lines that I found to be masterfully written, but I kept finding myself just reading, and not connecting to the words. And this isn’t to say that I “couldn’t relate” because I really dislike that position on reading, but more that I just felt I wasn’t fully engaged because I wasn’t grasping all of the meaning. I may have to do another read of this one.

This collection paints the world in a sort of ominous beauty that would be as harrowing as it is stunning if it weren’t also…surprisingly charming.

Many of these poems are about war or fear or uncertainty, and yet the collection starts with a severed statue hand  flipping the bird. That’s the energy I need in my poems. There is no need for this collection to take itself too seriously, simply because no one in their right mind could come away believing Van Landingham anything less than a master of her craft. It weaves the personal and historical so intricately that it’s impossible to distinguish between them. In fact, it makes me feel a little daft for ever thinking of them as separate at all.

In the collection’s titular poem, Van Landingham writes that,

And though that may be true many places. For me, all of these words are welcome ones.