Benaim accurately captures the mood and feelings surrounding depression and heartbreak. This collection hit me hard, and it took me several pages to realize that I'd read some of the authors work before! Beautifully haunting collection.

I found this poetry book a bit hard to read. The fragmentation of sentences were problematic. Was just an 'okayish' read for me.

These poems were quite good. I liked the diversity of the collection and I liked its honesty. I would buy Sabrina's next book - just to see how she's evolving.

While Benaim's voice is raw and real, some of her poems fell flat to me. Many broke my heart and made me cry, while I couldn't connect with others at all. It was a mixed bag of some great pieces and some others that simply didn't reach me.
Her work continues to intrigue me and I will keep an eye out for her future work, but I may not be as invested in it.

I have a weird relationship with poetry. I loved and so strongly related to some of the poems and others went over my head. Worth reading if you have depression, though. And you should absolutely look up her performing poems.

I was not entirely sure how to describe this book. First of all it took me a lot of time to read it, because I felt very moved by it. I apologize for how late I am to it.

I can only say that this book was extremely emotive, It moved me so so much and I found it to be beautiful.

I sometimes can't explain why poetry books speak to me so much, but this one touched me on a very deep level. It's really worth the read.

I've been a very big fan of the videos of Sabrina I've witnessed over the years, so I began already knowing how adept she is at describing the topsy-turvey emotional whirlwind that is suffering from depression in a succinct yet cutting way. Reading her work adds a new level of intimacy than there is watching er preform, but I urge everyone who has read or is thinking about reading to look her up!
But as for the poems - there's essentially two themes running underneath this collection, and I think the work is stronger - or at least resonates more deeply with me - when she is talking about her mental illness, rather than her lost love & heartbreak. Still! It's a moving and beautiful series.
Stand-outs include: the loneliest sweet potato, so my friend tells me she identifies as a mermaid..., poems from the beach trip, & the slow now.

Review link to be added once review has been edited and published.

Thank you to NetGalley and Button Poetry for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Depression & Other Magic Tricks is the debut book by Sabrina Benaim, it explores themes of mental health, love, and family .I was really hoping to love this collection but sadly i found it to be a little underwhelming. There were some poems that I really did enjoy. The poems about depression felt very personal and I applaud the author for expressing her feelings, as it must be hard to share something like that with the world. Other poems felt like they were just there to fill up space. If your looking for a short quick poetry collection then pick this one up.

Favorite Poems:
+explaining my depression to my mother a conversation +so my friend tells me she identifies as a mermaid...

I loved this book! Struggling with depression and Anxiety myself, her
book was easy to read and something I could relate to. This book is
a treasure, one that I would feel good about giving to a friend as a gift!

I truly believe that the poetry Benaim writes is the type that should be read aloud. I couldn't figure out how her premiere poem, "First Date" was supposed to be read, so I found a video of her performing it on YouTube and from there I knew what voice she was trying to use. Now, certainly, I don't use that against her by any means. After all, the ancient Greeks designed poetry to be spoken, not read.

Although I haven't been diagnosed with depression, I've been in those days where you just cannot find the ability to leave your bed and it feels like no one is there to help you. I appreciate the voice that Benaim gives to this illness. Some of the poems are also incredibly personal as she speaks of past loves and her relationships with her parents, and I love the open honesty that she weaves into her poems. I hope she continues to write, perform, and publish more poems because these were enjoyable yet important reads.

Sabrina Benaim surprised me with her poem "Explaining my depression to my mother" and her Youtube video of it totally showed the emotions and intensity of this poem. Although I loved this poem, I can't say that I liked all the poems in the book. My favorite poems were the ones that talked about depression and mental health because I think is so important to learn about this topics by people who has passed through this problems. I could relate with her easily and find her voice in those. But, I didn't like the ones that talked about romance and breakups because they had a lot of metaphors kind of difficult to understand. So, I spent most of the time trying to understand them "completely" or trying to find why would she write about that or whom it was dedicated to. Overall, it was a good read.

Brilliantly beautiful. These words are something I have always needed, and still need today.

A few poems really resonated with me but for the most part they didn't make much sense. I found it hard to follow and understand the meaning of a lot of the poems. Overall, though, I thought it was good but I'm not about to run and get myself a hard copy.

Overall opinion of the book:

Although I have only given this book 2 out of 5 stars, this isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy it at all – I did. In fact, there were some pieces that I felt were written brilliantly and resonated strongly with me. I just didn’t gel with the poetry and Benaim’s writing style as a whole.

It’s clear that this book of poetry is very personal and Benaim opens up about her struggles with depression in an often vivid and hard hitting way. I commend her for her honesty as this mustn’t have been an easy book to publish. It’s great that she’s so open about her struggles with mental illness, in particular depression and anxiety.

I’m going to be honest though and say that I didn’t connect with this book as a whole. I was expecting to feel more moved by the poetry than I actually was, which I was disappointed by because I’ve been looking forward to reading this for a while.

I think that it may have been the writing style that I wasn’t fully keen on, as sometimes it felt as though the poems were an unedited stream of consciousness, rather than a polished and published piece of work. I do understand that the content is very raw however, and this is likely an intentional style. I personally enjoy to read poems with set stanzas and some of the poems in this book are formatted more as a paragraph. My preferred poetry style is quite old fashioned, which is why I sometimes don’t enjoy reading contemporary and modern poetry as much as other people.



As I’ve mentioned above, the poems tackles the subject of mental illness well. Although many people can suffer from the same mental illness, everyone experiences it in a completely different way. This collection of poetry explores this well. It also delves into other people’s perceptions of an individual’s mental health. As shown in the quote above, Sabrina’s mother often doesn’t understand her anxiety and depression. Even though Sabrina tries to explain it to her, her mother will never be able to experience her exact feelings. This was an interesting aspect to the book as it emphasises the importance of allowing others to share their thoughts and feelings, especially if they are struggling with mental illness.

I also want to say how much I like the cover of this book. It’s so simple, but I think it’s lovely, particularly the font that’s used.


Final thoughts:

Although I didn’t connect with this book as much as I thought it would, I would still recommend this book to others. It was an interesting read, and delves well into the thoughts and feeling of someone struggling with mental illnesses.

Sabrina is honest and her poems are filled with real emotion. Although I didn’t feel overly moved by this book, that’s not to say that you won’t be. Just by looking at its Goodreads rating, you can see that many people have enjoyed this book.

I have never seen any of Sabrina Benaim’s performances before but I will definitively be checking them out now. I loved her poetry collection. It was raw and emotional covering a range of topics from mental illness to dealing with break ups to the importance of self care. Her writing was beautiful and funny. I especially like her poem “So My Friend Tells Me She Identifies as a Mermaid...” which starts off so hysterically funny and then suddenly switches to such deep emotion I was caught off guard by it. Her letters to Beyoncé are also particularly special. This is the poetry collection people should be shouting about! Sabrina deserves to go viral again.

Thank you to Netgalley and the author for the advanced copy!

This collection of poems really captured what it is like to live with depression. The author really captured how isolating this disorder can feel at times. Thank you again!

I picked this up being totally unfamiliar with this poet or her work, but hey, the collection had a catchy title and reading/hearing/learning about mental illness is something that is important to me, so the fact that at least some of the poetry was going to deal with depression-- but in a way that was sarcastic-- so it seemed like it would be worth my time.
To say I loved this collection would be an understatement. This is one of the most cohesive poetry collections I've ever read in terms of through-threads of theme and experiences, and one of the very best I've read to boot. Benaim's imagery is beautiful, unique, startling, and ingenious. The way she lays out the words on the page is excellent, done with a skillful eye that begins approaching the genius of e.e. cummings.
And from the acknowledgments I have learned that Benaim is best known for her spoken word poetry, with millions of views online. Sounds like I have some YouTubing to do, now.

Review to be posted on mid-December, I will update the links to my blog, Twitter, etc then.

I had read that this book was a collection of poems about depression, love and heartbreak, and normally I don't love poetry much, so I hesitated for a long time before getting it. Still, I'd forgotten it was a poem collection when I got this book in Netgalley, and the first poem threw me off: I'm not a fan of modern-looking poems which read like a stream of thoughts, stressful and not entirely constructed to make sense to a reader outside of the author's head. So I glared a bit at the book and mentally scowled at myself for having gotten it. Then I kept turning pages.
And turning pages, and turning pages. The poems changed and, while the first is still my least favorite one, I started to enjoy them. Sabrina speaks in soft, quiet verses, stirring your emotions ever so slowly. My heart broke at her poem "explaining depression to my mother".

mom,
my depression is a shape shifter;
one day it is as small as a firefly in the palm of a bear,
the next, it's the bear.
those days i play dead until the bear leaves me alone.

The truth in these verses hit me like a soft-spoken acknowledgement. From then on, this book and I understood each other a thousand times better, and I came to love this poem best, followed by untitled (i) and untitled (ii). I don't love the Beyoncé parts, but that's okay. The poems in the middle of the book are my favorites, and I feel the urge to buy this to read more quietly and patiently.

I wanted to make these poems last, and I wanted to devour them. So I took several breaks to ponder and listen to instrumental music, and even then the book didn't take more than half an afternoon to read.

This book has a sadness to it, but it's not inherently sad itself. It's just very emotional.

I don’t remember the first time I saw Sabrina Benaim’s “Explaining My Depression to My Mother”. The YouTube video is date-stamped with the year 2014, and back then I watched a lot of poetry performances when my life felt particularly messy. Benaim’s stood out because of this line:

anxiety is the cousin visiting from out of town
depression felt obligated to bring to the party.
mom, i am the party.
only, i am a party i don’t want to be at.

#Relateable. Benaim’s personification of mental illness in this piece is incredible — the way she shakes, shouts, and talks to her unseen mother feels familiar in all the worst ways. It’s a piece I’ve seen shared time and time again on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. To this day, the full performance makes my stomach swoop.

So, when Benaim’s first book of poetry showed up on my recommended reads on NetGalley, I immediately clicked through, hoping for the same raw energy in her written work as she displays in her performance pieces. Depression & Other Magic Tricks boasts a lot of that same passion, though the translation of her work to text rather than speech sometimes leaves things to be desired.

From the book’s introduction, which plays with words and what they mean until Benaim circles back around to a simple “hello” to deep, aching pontifications on what it looks like to not get out of bed even on the mornings when you only hit the snooze button once, Depression digs deep into the emotions of someone who struggles daily with mental illness. It digs into parental relationships and romantic relationships and personal feelings of loss. It digs into trauma and all of its trappings while still remaining vague enough to push the reader into difficult, emotional places where we’re really able to sit with Benaim’s metaphors and experience them for ourselves.

our brains remember the infliction
of pain, be it physical, psychological, or emotional.
we remember this hurt as a means to avoid it in the future.
– “how to fold a memory”

Benaim’s writing in Depression & Other Magic Tricks is heavy, though it has moments where it borders on overwrought. The magnetism of her performance pieces doesn’t translate well to the page, which leaves some metaphors hanging in the balance. This is unfortunate, seeing as one of Benaim’s strongest skills is her ability to weave extended metaphors.

The run-on quality of her longer pieces (often presented as paragraphs, rather than line-by-line poems), in particular, evokes the panicked, breathless way she performed “Explaining My Depression to My Mother” in that 2014 video. Reading these pieces made me want to hear them in order to fully immerse myself in and understand them. The passion is there — but reading these pieces lacks the finesse of hearing them in Benaim’s own voice.

That being said, I still loved this book. I felt the same guttural tug reading Depression & Other Magic Tricks as I feel every time I watch Benaim perform. I just wanted more, and by more I mean performance. This poet’s words are not meant to be ingested in a book format. But I still think this is a solid read, and it makes me excited for what else Sabrina Benaim produces in the future.

Overall Rating: ★★★★☆
Recommended for: Everyone