Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - oh, you thought this was a date?!: Apocalypse Poems

Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

oh, you thought this was a date?!: Apocalypse Poems by C. Russell Price

3 reviews

aserra's review

challenging dark emotional sad fast-paced

5.0

A brilliant book from one of the most brilliant poets of the 21st century thus far. The quality of their poetry is comparable to Elizabeth Bishop, Mina Loy, Frank O'Hara--dare I say even Audre Lorde? Price's metaphors and language soar into a realm of distinction set aside from anything else (which I mean in the most positive way). The organization of the book, with the soundtrack, the rituals, the definitions, is glorious.

Price is a necessary, unapologetic voice bellowing their survivor stories, middle fingers up to those who try to censor and marginalize them. The book's description alerts you to the difficult content with which this deals. Don't say you weren't warned. If you can read the book safely, you absolutely should, and should absolutely not punish it for the productive discomfort it may cause.

Written with love and admiration from a fellow survivor xx

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dorothysbookshelf's review

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challenging dark emotional tense slow-paced

3.75

ad, gifted by publisher - this is a highly experimental collection of punk poetry sang to the theme of the apocalypse, discussing desire, exploitation, and family relationships, both present and historical. the poems were jarring and unnerving, which made for a conflicting reading experience due to the heavy themes and apocalyptic undertones, it was a hard and upsetting book to read; i could tell that this was intentional as it was very well executed - it’s very hard to make a poetry collection both incredible and so unsettling without one effecting the other, but Price manages this amazingly. very interested to read more of their work in the future.

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kenfoxley's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

2.0

I wanted to like this so much, I really did. It's written by genderqueer author C. Russell Price, and it's a collection of poetry about sexual identity and gender discovery, but I just... did not like it. There are parts of it I did enjoy, especially the way it's written and the execution of the layout of the book and how each chapter is divided by words with definitions that are up for interpretation and kind of written out in the way the author interprets those words. But the next page after a definition of a word is a "Ritual" page, which every time I got to made absolutely no sense to me, most of the rituals sounded self sabotaging and really aggressive. I just do not think this was for me, and that's okay. All poetry can be subjective and taken differently by different people, so maybe I just wasn't understanding it the way the author intended.

I also want to mention there are absolutely no trigger warnings in this book, and this discusses several triggering and sensitive topics that may upset people. I was taken aback by some of these topics so I don't want anyone else to be surprised by it's contents. So since it doesn't give any trigger warnings, I will: molestation, rape, and self harm are the big ones. The only other one I can think of is self sabotage which I'm not sure is a major trigger warning, but just something to be aware of if you pick up this book.

Like I said, I wanted to like this, I really did. I loved the representation that a genderqueer author wrote a book of poetry about their experiences and navigating life. The only thing stopping me from giving it one star is I did like the execution of how it was laid out, and the way it was written. With that being said, I give this 2/5 stars.

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