A review by ashrocketship
The Last Mastodon by Christina Olson

4.0

I'm not really a poetry person - though ironically I've had more poetry published than fiction - but I have inexplicably resolved to stop making fun of it in 2020, so I got started with this collection because I love mastodons - though am partial to mammoths because of a trip to the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, South Dakota in 2015 that I recommend to absolutely everyone because it's spectacular and emotional and life-changing if you care about long dead things - and because Hemet, California is absolutely one of the worst places I've ever been in my life and thus inexplicably magnetic to me. I'm rambling because I don't know how to talk about poetry, honestly. This felt alive and not like a waste of time and I'm glad I threw the cash at rattle to get my hands on it. My favorites were "Among the Bones" and "Catalogue of Damages" and "How to Care for Yesterday's Camel" and the line "One day, even humans will be reassembled / wrong. If we are lucky, they will make us taller, kinder than we ever were." will stay with me for a long time.