Andrea Gibson is one of my favorite performance poets. Their work, as always, is insanely personal and specific, and I appreciated this collection.
I enjoyed reading this book overall; however reading this digitally seemed insufficient, because of the way the poems are formatted a single poem lasted many pages. I think this would have been a slightly more enjoyable experience hearing the poems performed (as I know Andrea Gibson is an exceptional performance poet) and I'm not convinced that their work in this book is necessarily well suited for the written page.

Loved it. Love poetry. Love queerness. What more is there to say?

I loved every poem and with discovering her youtube presence i'll shortly be doing a deepdive.

Lord of the Butterflies is a great follow to Andrea's Gibson's prior work. I got to see Gibson perform several years ago and felt that this book was a great addition to their body of work that I was fortunate enough to see/hear. I definitely recommend it to fans of spoken word poetry.

Thanks to Netgalley I fell in love with another poet. From everything I want to read and feel from gender, to love, and the right side of politics... this was everything I wanted. I would say all of them were my favorite, save the few that sometimes felt too out of my knowledge comfort. I absolutely recommend this to everyone. The style was infectious, the tone was unforgiving and it made me want to feel every emotion at once. It's short but extremely good and well-written. I definitely will pick up other works by this author.

Raw and electric, this book captures so much reality. It is relevant and well-paced, I enjoyed reading this!

[The ARC of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]

I finally finished "Lord of the Butterflies" and now I regret not reading it earlier! As a queer person, this book meant so much to me. I liked some of the poems more than others, but overall, this is one of my favorite poetry books.

Take Me With You is a collection of LGBTQ poems written by Andrea Gibson. And is divided into three segments: Love, The World and Becoming, through which it explores themes of love, gender, politics, sexuality, family, and forgiveness.

Few of the poems were really well written and touches your heart. But many were just, Just Bad. Among which some were too cliched and some cringe worthy

I absolutely loved this poetry collection. Emotional, and hit me hard. I'd love to read more from this author.

"Lord of the Butterflies" is full of poems that were more miss than hit for me. However, I did enjoy some of them, hence the rating. It definitely isn't the worst book of poetry I've read.

A beautiful, thorough and at times heart-wrenching collection of poetry.

"You don't want a soft death.
You want a hard life that is your life."

I really appreciate Gibson's style - poetic but approachable at the same time. Even if you're not a frequent reader of poetry, this collection will manage to get through to your core, because its use of language is clear yet thoughtful, minimalist but sharp. I think the most real thing to say about it, is that it always feels truthful. Beauty is not embellished, but is exactly as it is. Cruelty isn't made beautiful, but more bearable through the truthfulness of Gibson's words nonetheless.

"I suffer
from unrequited self love.
I love myself, but I don't
love myself
back."

On a personal level I found the works on living and coping with anxiety on a daily basis really truthful. It's always meaningful to see feelings you have explicated on the page this way, and it allows both a better look at ones own experience and a confirmation from outside that yes, these feelings are true, and valid, and we are not alone in feeling them.

"Don't worry, the medic said,
It's just a panic attack,

as if that would comfort me,
to know I am the enemy,
my body--it's own stalker."

I will be looking out for Gibson's previous works now that they have grabbed me like this. And I will surely be looking out for what they do next.

I did not enjoy this collection. the book had more prose than poetry, it was very long and boring. It dragged on and I expected more after hearing such good things about this author.

This is another book by @buttonpoetry and as much I love the performance of these poems, I don't enjoy reading them at all! However, this book was an exception as I really liked some of the writing in it. While there were some poems that I couldn't relate too, but largely I loved how the Poetess has addressed the various issues that she talks about!
Overall, this mixed bag of poetry was a decent read for me!
I've shared some of the writing from this book earlier and will be reading out some on my podcast channel soon. You can listen to my podcasts by clicking the link in the description 😌..

I really enjoyed parts of this. Some of it just didn't click with me but what I did get made me quite emotional. Overall it was a good collection that I plan on rereading.

Reading Lord of the Butterflies, the poems aren't easily quantified and picked apart. They're deep and complex, a force to be reckoned with that stay with you long after you're done reading. I can't recommend it enough.

Andrea Gibson's work stands up on the page as well as in performance. This is definitely time well spent.

I got introduced to Andrea thru the Spoken poetry posted on Youtube, and I instantly got hooked to her.
Her poetry talks about all the norms that need to be broken in society. And this one was another eye opener on such topics.

I was amazed when it was available on netgalley, I couldn't stop myself from requesting it to read. And Yeaassh! I got it, I read as part of #leastreader_nb April prompt Poetry.

Moving and powerful poetry from one of the best poets around, The topics cover everything from love and family to gun violence and hate speech. I can’t express how much I enjoyed this poetry. I bought a copy right after reading it. Her mastery of using just the right word or phrase is so moving. It is simply a stunning work.

Lord of the Butterflies by Andrea Gibson is a collection of raw, honest poetry. This collection was very trying for me to get through. It would have benefited with a trigger warning since it covered some topics that were unsettling, such as suicide/suicidal thoughts. With a warning, it would have made the reading experience a bit more easier since there was preparation instead of being caught completely unaware.
The formatting also made it hard to get through. Some looked like long paragraphs, another looked like a newspaper clipping, making it hard to actually see without increasing the font on my kindle to the max. It was creative, just a bit hard to read.
While I had trouble with the collection, I did find a few poems that I really enjoyed.

When all the good in you
starts arguing with all the bad in you
about who you are,
never let the bad in you
make the better case.

Did not enjoy this book, DNF'd this one about half way thru, maybe I'm just not it's target audience.

I thought the poetry in here was beautiful. I've never read any of Andrea Gibson's work before, but she now has a new fan! I can't wait to get to her other collections.