Reviews

Collected Body by Valzhyna Mort

nick_jenkins's review

5.0

"What is love if not a need for a beholder, a witness; if not the possibility to be immortalized in the story of another person? The insect caught in a drop of amber knew what it was doing. Neither helper nor bystander. Your blood runs like a tape of an implanted recorder. You are my plan for immortality. The audience for my privacy. I'm molding you into a gravestone of all the words and images of myself I won't be able to sustain forever." (from "Zhenya," one of two long prose poems in this collection)

Okay, so maybe there's a bit of morbidity there along with the romanticism, but when has romanticism not intertwined love and death?

"often to shed light on the darkness,
light isn't enough. Often what I need is an even darker
darkness." (from "Mocking Bird Hotel")

lifeinpoetry's review

I wish there wasn't a lengthy poem in this collection making fun of a peer's disability.

j0rdan0fjupit3r's review

5.0

had not heard of this author before picking this collection up. clearly i was missing out. absolutely brilliant collection i could see myself reading over and over again. particularly liked the prose “Aunt Anna”.

grumpwizard's review

3.0

These poems were intense and visceral. I do not think I was ready for them, but I made my way through. Mort pulls no punches with her honesty. Particularly interesting where her prose-poetry pieces discussing the lives of herself and her family members.

readingwithk's review

3.0

I thought that Mort did an exceptional job with imagery--it was all so raw and visceral. There were many individual lines that I thought were beautiful and lovely. However, when all put together into a single poem, all put together in this collection, I found myself having a hard time following the messages, meanings, and story.