thevampiremars's reviews
196 reviews

The Book of Queer Saints by Belle Tolls, Nikki R. Leigh, Eric Raglin, Mae Murray, Joe Koch, Joshua R. Pangborn, Briar Ripley Page, K.S. Walker, Hailey Piper, Eric LaRocca, Perry Ruhland, LC von Hessen, James Bennett, George Daniel Lea

dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

3.0

I liked “The Love That Whirls” by Joe Koch and “Therianthrope” by Briar Ripley Page. I also enjoyed “Heliogabalus Fabulous” by Belle Tolls but that wasn’t a horror story in the slightest. Ironically it might be the collection’s best example of “Queer Saints” (as promised by the title of the book) – I had expected more religious/spiritual imagery. Christianity does inform this anthology, though; in the introduction the editor talks about being “a queer person who grew up in the repressive Bible Belt” which maybe explains why some of these stories felt a bit lacklustre to me personally – I don’t think vaguely sapphic witches are particularly shocking or revolutionary, but maybe they would be in Arkansas or whatever. idk... This book came out in 2022 but you wouldn’t know it.

Rapture's Road by Seán Hewitt

mysterious reflective fast-paced

4.0

Better than Tongues of Fire; more varied. The poems here are broken off and unresolved, lending them a ghostly and dreamlike quality. It can be a little frustrating sometimes, and I was left wanting more from some of these poems, but I suppose that’s the nature of dreams, isn’t it? I think it works well. It’s hard to pick out favourites because this broken-off format kind of weaves the poems together into a single disjointed work, but I was particularly fond of “Like a feather,” “Sleepwalk,” “Mistletoe,” and “Immram.”

Tongues of Fire by Seán Hewitt

reflective medium-paced

3.0

Earthy. Consistent quality but samey. In the end, it started to get on my nerves. Maybe I would have liked the titular poem if I’d encountered it by itself, but its placement at the end of this anthology reduces it to yet another tree metaphor. Beautiful imagery loses its lustre eventually.

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.5

Everyone sucks and everyone deserves better.

The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell

adventurous hopeful reflective fast-paced

4.0

The faggots, it was noticed, are too quick to believe that the revolution had come and so too quick to celebrate. The vanguard demands that the revolution go on forever and so demands that the celebration only be planned, never enacted.

Not quite a story, not quite a manifesto. But why am I trying to categorise it?

How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm

slow-paced

2.0

Middle class white man discovers direct action. 

We Are ‘Nature' Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones by John Jordan, Isabelle Fremeaux

emotional hopeful inspiring medium-paced

4.5

Not a how-to guide by any means, but it does demonstrate possibilities outside the enclosures of capitalism, with emphasis on building community and connections not only with your fellow humans but with the broader ecosystem. Inspiring.

CONTENT WARNINGS: climate change/ecological collapse/extinction, eviction, police brutality 

Portrait of My Body as a Crime I'm Still Committing by Topaz Winters

emotional medium-paced

3.5

My favourite poems were “Serenade to Surrender,” “Insomnia,” “Event Horizon,” and “July”

I found many of the other poems to be unfocused and meandering. I also noticed some were structured in a way that makes sense visually but not rhythmically, and couldn’t unsee that afterwards. Some outstayed their welcome (“Self-Diagnosis” was good but would have been more impactful had it been confined to a single page, I think.)

The whole thing felt a bit amateurish, a bit Tumblr... It is raw and tender, but in a slightly clumsy way. To be fair, Winters was in their late teens when this book was published (and some of the poems may have been written a few years prior). I’d like to read their more recent work.

CONTENT WARNINGS: disordered eating, self harm, suicidality

Death by Landscape by Elvia Wilk
Did not finish book. Stopped at 15%.

It’s alright. I’ll probably revisit it at some point, but I don’t really have the energy for it right now. I don’t get the sense that there’s some uniting theory or conclusion being set up. It’s just a collection of brief essays connected by theme but not really building upon one another, and for the most part they’re just plot synopses for short stories I haven’t read. The writing is accessible and the concepts explored are interesting (though they’re not Wilk’s concepts, so I’m not sure I can give her too much credit). There’s just not enough substance to keep me hooked. 

Ariel by Sylvia Plath

dark reflective fast-paced

3.5

“The world is blood-hot and personal”

I picked up this book because I was vaguely familiar with Sylvia Plath through cultural osmosis but had never actually read her work, and I wanted to change that.

I’m not sure what to make of this collection. There were a few poems I liked (“Tulips,” “Berck-Plage,” “Paralytic”) but others seemed... jumbled? I’m not sure if that’s the right word.

There’s a dreamlike quality in Plath’s writing, evoking imagery mostly by naming colours, which is enough to establish the location or the mood but then I’d feel a bit lost. I felt like I never quite got what she was gesturing at; I know she was a writer and I know she was abused and I know she killed herself, but I didn’t know her, so the deeply personal nature of many of these poems made it difficult for me to grasp her meaning.

CONTENT WARNINGS: death, suicide, injury, blood, racism