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A review by twilliamson
The Smallest of Bones by Holly Lyn Walrath
5.0
The Smallest of Bones has the biggest of hearts when it comes to poetry, and Holly Lyn Walrath has to be one of the finest voices I've encountered in this style of dark poetry. In every poem, Holly manages to weave a familiar emotional yearning, a reaction to human fragility that seems to infect every living system of our beings, so that there can be little discernment between love and pain, desire and destruction, agency and enslavement.
Walrath's poems are packed with symbolic significance, in spite of some of their brevity. Her concision and consistency in voice pitches her work into higher elevation, even as her subject matter remains rooted somewhere in the guts, shivering in the spine or along the mandible of a body.
I love this collection, and it hits the human, emotional beats I desperately crave from poetry. She delivers a startling wit, a righteousness in pointing out injustices especially as it comes to sex and agency, and a collection of poetry that acts as a study of human fragility that cries out to be read.
So read it.
Walrath's poems are packed with symbolic significance, in spite of some of their brevity. Her concision and consistency in voice pitches her work into higher elevation, even as her subject matter remains rooted somewhere in the guts, shivering in the spine or along the mandible of a body.
I love this collection, and it hits the human, emotional beats I desperately crave from poetry. She delivers a startling wit, a righteousness in pointing out injustices especially as it comes to sex and agency, and a collection of poetry that acts as a study of human fragility that cries out to be read.
So read it.