Everything Reminds You of Something Else is a beautiful collection of poems by Elana Wolff. One of my personal favorites was 'Air'. Every poem was unique in its own way and I was able to relate to some of the poems. I liked the writing style and particularly enjoyed the vivid imagery. As is the case with most good poetry books, re-reading might be required in order to properly grasp the depth and meaning behind each individual poem in this wonderful collection.

Thank you to Netgalley, Guernica Editions, and Elana Wolff for the chance to read and review this ARC;

While most of the poetry books I get from Netgalley bowl me over, every once in a while I'm bound to find one that isn't my specific cup of tea and Everything Reminds You of Something Else is definitely that. While the formatting for it being delivered to the iPad was a bit of a nightmare, squishing everything one after another without any spaces (at least I hope it was? I assumed it was, and if it isn't that would become another complaint to add to this list).

For me personally, I found the work disjointed and I found it hard to find a message in most of the small pieces or any kind of overarching connector for why they were all being published together. I wish the author well with finding the audience this is meant for, as one can tell she put a lot of work into it, even if it was not for me.

A nice collection of writing, thoughtful, well written. Would recommend to anyone just wanting to read a couple short things and poems before bed.

3.5 stars.

Thanks for Netgalley and respective publishers.

"We got the parents we wanted well;
even arranged the marriage from our choir invisible seats
It was a bad match-
just what we needed for genes and growth.
Every night I go for a walk,I fall for the same black shadow"

A quite simple and easy read poetry book. Poems were incredible especially titled with some topics.
But, I have given not much rating because of nonrhythmic flow founded by me.
Even, perception and deepness was there. Comprehensive poetry entangled with solitude among mostly topic.
Poetry is my favourite, It was lovely inside my poetic heart.

This may not make sense: While I did not love most of the poems in this collection, I enjoyed reading the collection as a whole.

Everything Reminds You Of Something Else by Elana Wolff

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Review:

“First commandment: drown and all is water.” This is how Elana Wolff begins her collection, with imagery of a sort of baptism. Wolff drew me in with that first line in her first poem “Jerusalem Day,” making it clear that perhaps this wasn’t a collection meant for me, but as a connection with her life as a Jewish woman. Upon research, I found out that there is no Jewish equivalent to a Christian baptism, but this collection is a sort of ablution of what we deem to be the norm. Her poems recall so much natural imagery that you get lost in the lovely descriptions of animals and flowers and bodies of water, trying to find a meaning that is not yours. Perhaps that was the purpose, to get lost under the waters of her words and only sometimes see a glimpse of the light above, of the destination.

I certainly got lost many times, and I don’t know if it was because the amount of metaphors and words I had to Google in order to understand a bit of a poem that I’m sure was great and was meant to be pondered upon. The usage of visual symbols like <,>, and ~ were confusing at times, but I think that was the purpose, to interrupt the way you visually think of poetry. I did, however, appreciate the usage of the infinity symbol in the poem “Meridian” (especially since it made me look up the word “lemniscate” and realize oh this is the word I’d been looking for to describe this poem) and the metaphors for how circular life is, which kind of reminded me of Paula Gunn Allen’s “The Sacred Hoop”.

Some other poems that stood out for me were: “The Tower” (I’ve talked about how the visual formatting of a poem is so unique, and I think this was a great example), “Spool” (I read an article by the author about how song is something she experiments with and there are hints of lyricism here), “Velocity Text” (Particularly the lines that said “Dreams demanding I give up sleep that heaves me, harrowed, elsewhere―”), “Lo” (to say one is “light as light, insubstantial as grace”... that had me sitting and staring out the window), “Altarpieces” (the usage of repetition, yet every single time it means something different…), “Elemental” (really looking into the power of naming things and things that should be abstract), and “Summer” (again, some repetition of the same lines at the beginning in the end, to symbolize how things can change when you’re at a standstill, because the world keeps revolving).

She finishes her collection with another water source in “Walking Song”: “When I get back, I’ll shed my shoes and hang my coat to drip. You are where I’m walking to, and always. You―the walrus―strong and oblong, song, the name, again. Now a second finer rain is falling on the first.”

Overall, I thought it was a well-thought collection of poetry. The reason for the lower rating is that it took me a long time to get through it, which isn’t really something that happens to me when reading poetry. It took more time to process the poems and try to understand them as well as digest them. As I said, they were really moving poems, it’s just not something you’re going to consume in one sitting as it’s not as straightforward at times. I recommend this if you’re a passionate poetry fan who loves to analyze every word put down.

Some of the poems featured in this collection were solid and really had me contemplating what the author was trying to say, while others, I felt, were random and had little meaning to me. There's no doubt the author is talented but I didn't necessary click with all the poems like I was hoping to. Whether it was because the poems were to vague in their meaning or too long, when I look back on this collection I remember the bad ones instead of the good ones.

Throughout this book Wolff explored different parts of life and how everything correlates with the something else. A quaint, little book with some beautiful hidden meanings.

While reading these poems, I had the impression of a poet looking up at the stars, or the trees, or at the zoo, avoiding eye contact with other humans. The majority of the poems, as a result, are ruminations on nature and the future, identity and self, but hardly ever about a person in relation to another. As such I found them difficult to connect to. They might be for you, but they didn't really work for me.

Quadriptych
"...As day sinks in, the music moults,
the facets all collapse...."

Interesting style, just couldn't get into any of the poems. Thank you to the publisher for the free copy.

I did not understand this collection of poems at all. I couldn't connect to any of them. It left me very confused.

There were a few standout poems like "Thin Girl" but most of the time I was wondering how such beautiful writing could feel so empty.

<p>I'm still not sure if I know how to read poetry. I find poems don't stick in my head very long, like they blend into my neurons' background noise after reading them, thinning out until there's not much left. Like yesterday, less than twelve hours ago, I read <A href="https://www.librarything.com/work/19044549/book/138424685">Everything Reminds You of Something Else</a>, with a poem about the ringing postman, and laying in bed not getting up, and I knew exactly that feeling and thought <i>I'll write about that in my review!</i> and then forgot about it entirely until this moment when I was flipping (well, e-flipping, it's a PDF) through and remembered. So I went from knowing exactly that feeling, a poem with perfect resonance, to, less than a day later, wiped from my mind. Is that me or the poetry? What does it say that the only poems I manage to recall are A.A. Milne's and Shel Silverstein's poems for kids?</p>

<p>Unprompted, here is what I remembered from <A href="https://www.librarything.com/work/19044549/book/138424685">Everything Reminds You of Something Else</a>:</p>

<ol>
<li>there is a poem with a guinea pig in it (for eating, not cuddling; they are in Ecuador);</li>
<li>this quote: <i>writing is compensation for a shortfall of some sort</i>.</li>
</ol>

<p>Maybe poetry is like air and we breathe it in greedily, use it in our muscles, but then, usefulness exhausted, we breathe out the remains and forget about it?</p>

<p>I think I liked <A href="https://www.librarything.com/work/19044549/book/138424685">Everything Reminds You of Something Else</a>. There were many >, which make me think of <i>greater than</i>'s. Indents are cut lines all over the pages. I liked the flow. It seemed consistent. Maybe I should stop requesting to review poetry books, but I like having poetry in my life, even if I don't know how to speak intelligently about it. </p>

<p>A pigeon in a crack of the <a href="http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-the-wailing-wall.htm">Wailing Wall</a> -- that was in the poetry book too. See, I can remember some things :)</p>

<p><A href="https://www.librarything.com/work/19044549/book/138424685">Everything Reminds You of Something Else</a> by Elana Wolff went on sale April 1, 2017.</p>

<p><small>I received a copy free from <a href="https://www.netgalley.com/">Netgalley</a> in exchange for an honest review.</small></p>

This book is full of beautiful poetry, which I really want to get into this year. So this is my second book, and I still have so much to learn about it, so I'm in no way an expert to poetry.

But I really liked the writing, all these poems were so beautiful written and reading them, I just had the greatest time and really enjoyed every single page.

I just didn't really connect with any of the poems. There wasn't one that really stuck with me, that I want to reread over and over again. That's making me a bit sad.

But still, I highly recommend this book, cause even though I didn't connect with the words, I'm sure lots of other people will. And have I mentioned how beautiful written these poems are?!

Did not finish. Writing was not nearly as appealing as the description made it out to be.

Everything Reminds You of Something Else by Elana Wolff is the poet’s fifth solo collection of poetry. Wolff is a Toronto-based poet, essayist, translator, and creator and facilitator of therapeutic art courses. She has taught English for Academic Purposes at York University in Toronto and at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Wolff’s poetry taps deep into the reader’s imagination. Words roll off the tongue and pass an almost dream like a vision. Alliteration and words that change in small degrees lead to leaps and jumps in meanings. Sometimes the words are fun and sometimes they induce a psychedelic journey. Not a drug induced Jim Morrison journey, but an intellectual, thinking journey into complex word masterpiece.


In the deep field where the spool people’s
old moon sometimes succeeds in moving
bog waters in June—to flow over
wan weeds and make them gleam, we meet
“Spool”

I felt for a while the sky was mine: the moon
the stars, the indigo wind; suns pale circle
rising at the horizon
“Meridian”

I was slaked like a calf at the teat last night,
perhaps because the stars were low,
so low their leaky light suffused the garden.
“Ouija Board”


Wolff weaves together themes of seasons, the moon, and the solstice. There is a primitiveness in the view of nature in many of the poems. The reader learns we are made of a combination of stardust and rain. Our complexity comes from the basic materials of nature; we are more than the sum of ingredients and poetry is much more than the sum of the words. A deep and enjoyable collection of poetry.

Everything Reminds You of Something Else by Elana Wolff is a deeply evocative collection of poetry. The bulk of the pieces are meaningful and vivid. While there were some pieces that I didn't fully understand (I've only recently started reading poetry for 'leisure'), this is definitely a strong collection that made me contemplate a lot of things. The humanities and social sciences nerd in me especially loved the Kafka references! My favourite pieces were Rain, Air, Meridian, Elemental and Walking Song. My absolute favourite was Metamorphoses, and is something I will carry with me for a long time:
"Some are born human, most have to humanize slowly.
I want to say I'm on my way"