A review by soudersmax
La Petite Mort by Eli Wilde

dark emotional mysterious fast-paced

2.5

 

“Unrelenting death is an ending / that can’t help starting over, / while fragile life is a beginning / that can only ever end.”

I found the first 75% of this anthology enchanting - there are many highlights in my book of beautiful verses, heavily laden with emotion and drama and hitting on the full range of human (and supernatural) experience from birth, death, spirituality, sex, nature, sickness, and poverty.

Unfortunately, as much as I enjoyed certain parts, I found a point at which the story thread running through them all stopped making sense to me. I still enjoyed most individual entries, but I think the reading experience lost something when the overarching events became unclear. Many of the events in the later part of the book had a wide variety of potential literal and metaphorical interpretations, and as soon as I thought I landed on something cohesive, I read a few more pages and lost the thread again. 

 Overall, 2.5/5 (rounded to 3 for some platforms) - I'm generally hesitant to review poetry, as voice is so subjective. I believe that there are many who would enjoy this collection, though I would recommend many of the individual poems more widely than I would the full anthology. Definitely for those into a more “emo”-style modern poetry, those who particularly love vampires, or people who really want to puzzle through analysis and meaning. 

Thanks NetGalley, Witching Hole Publications, and Eli Wilde for sharing a copy!