scrow1022's review
5.0
Stealing from blurbs: "electric", "holy ceremony", "raw & expertly crafted meditations of death, rituals of passage, translation, desire, diaspora, and personhood". Exciting, enlivening, guiding, and a holy container for grief.
adayafterautumn's review
5.0
if this has 100 fans I'm one of them, if this has 10 fans im one of them, if this has 0 fans it means I'm dead <3
ryliereadss's review
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
I wasn't into this book at first but after reading a few more poems I was really into it! Sax talks about gender, mental health, suicide, sex, and buttholes. I highly recommend picking this one up!
Content Warnings
Minor: Suicide attempt, Rape, and Suicide
There are some poems that imply rape or sexual assault. There are also some poems that talk about suicide and suicide attempts.milesjmoran's review
3.0
I was expecting to fall in love with this book...it seemed to have all the right ingredients and, after reading the first poem, I was certain this was going to be a new favourite. However, this is a 3.5 for me and I feel that my high expectations harmed this book. There’s a lot about Bury It that I loved, for starters the language is sublime.
I prayed for a different kind
of puberty: skin transforming into floor boards
muscles into cobwebs, growing pain sounding
like an attic groaning under the weight of old
photo albums...
There were so many moments such as this one where I felt utterly taken aback by such perfect yet unique imagery. The themes of queerness, faith, nature, grief, and death are beautifully and rawly handled, and there are recurring motifs that make each poem feel interconnected and integral to one another, forming one whole picture.
My favourite poems are Bildungsroman, Ultrasound, Essay on Crying in Public, Missing Persons, Synonyms for Raw, I Want So Desperately to be Finished, The Official Cause For Death, Silent Auction, Treyf, Naubade, Objectophile, Poem About Water, Impermanence, I.35, Gay Boys & The Bridges who Love Them, and Will.
I know that sounds like a lot of positives but I didn’t love this collection. A lot of the poems, despite being perfectly constructed and imbued with striking imagery and language, didn’t hit home for me. Sometimes there didn’t seem to be a focus, the poems didn’t always feel like they were flowing from one to another, making a jarring reading experience where I was in one moment in awe of Sax’s talent and deeply moved, to the next moment feeling like I was just reading pretty words that didn’t move me at all.
I may need to reread this and see how it makes me feel then. I want to fall in love with this book but as of right now, I’m in love with parts of it and borderline indifferent about others.
I prayed for a different kind
of puberty: skin transforming into floor boards
muscles into cobwebs, growing pain sounding
like an attic groaning under the weight of old
photo albums...
There were so many moments such as this one where I felt utterly taken aback by such perfect yet unique imagery. The themes of queerness, faith, nature, grief, and death are beautifully and rawly handled, and there are recurring motifs that make each poem feel interconnected and integral to one another, forming one whole picture.
My favourite poems are Bildungsroman, Ultrasound, Essay on Crying in Public, Missing Persons, Synonyms for Raw, I Want So Desperately to be Finished, The Official Cause For Death, Silent Auction, Treyf, Naubade, Objectophile, Poem About Water, Impermanence, I.35, Gay Boys & The Bridges who Love Them, and Will.
I know that sounds like a lot of positives but I didn’t love this collection. A lot of the poems, despite being perfectly constructed and imbued with striking imagery and language, didn’t hit home for me. Sometimes there didn’t seem to be a focus, the poems didn’t always feel like they were flowing from one to another, making a jarring reading experience where I was in one moment in awe of Sax’s talent and deeply moved, to the next moment feeling like I was just reading pretty words that didn’t move me at all.
I may need to reread this and see how it makes me feel then. I want to fall in love with this book but as of right now, I’m in love with parts of it and borderline indifferent about others.
laurelinwonder's review
5.0
This collection broke me and remade my perception, this is the move of a deft and talented poet. The fear and vulnerability of this collection is what drives it. The driving voice, rhythm, anaphora, and confessional kept me reading until the very end. It was a pleasure to read aloud, the feel the intentional intensity. Sax’s poems draw on a personal history of unprotected sex, sex with strangers, unprotected sex with strangers for money, and all the above in combination with drugs. This is a candid collection, that never loses its lyricism and beauty. I couldn't put it down, and I keep returning to it, as should you all.