I really enjoyed this collection of poetry and I think it actually managed to get me closer to contemporary poetry. At first I was a bit skeptical, but then I started to read the poems and the stories that were told and it felt relatable. They are filled with emotions, fairly easy to read and can be read in any order, after all. I loved it!

If Kali Uchis want to be a poet this book would be her voice. This book is a collection of poems and prose that documents or chronologies the life of a woman who had to accept and understand the eighteen inches distance between her heart and her mind. We follow her on a life journey as she learns about heartbreak, acceptance, and as she builds and takes down a wall around her heart.

Trigger warning for rape, emotional trauma, and abortion.

There are a few lines in this book that got to me and one is in the very start
"It worries me that you'll always feel the need to be the one who loves more. And there is a pain in that type of love"
This hit me deeply, as someone who always loved too hard and too deeply, I used to forget how a loving relationship is a two-way thing. People who have not realized this, give and give but never receive and that can be so harmful.

Eighteen Inches: The Distance between the Heart and Mind by Mirtha Michelle Castro Mármol



This poetry book is broken down by subject which includes Mirtha’s personal stories and lessons learned before introducing the poetry.



Review: One word to describe this book? Stunning! It's personal, emotional, real and raw, she’s laid out everything for everyone to read, and it’s inspiring. I loved how deep she dove to express herself, and the poetry was beautiful.

I enjoy reading poetry that resonates with me and the world around me, and Eighteen Inches did just that from the first page. Kudos

love this book so much. at some point, I can relate to some things inside of it. reading this book in one sitting.

I will come write out and say it – there is nothing more calming and blissful than reading poetry that’s strong and straight from the heart. And this book is one of the most accurate examples of the same.
In this book, Mirtha has pooled in her experiences with her family, growing up, facing the world and realising that life isn’t a fairy tale. She shares her ups and downs with love, relationships, sexual attraction and the changes she felt in herself during all this.
This is the kind of book you sit with on a cold day, snuggled in bed with a cup of hot chocolate. And you’ll definitely need a box of tissues. I had a lot of “I faced this too” moments while reading.
This book is raw, very out-there, honest and the flow of language is astounding! I loved it and I definitely recommend it.

This was a beautiful collection of poetry and short stories. They were raw and real. They touched upon all the possible scenarios a person can be feeling or experiencing at any point. However, I did not like or agree with the chapter about Happiness. I felt that chapter was very poor in taste. It said happiness is a choice and I got the vibe that the author was looking down at whoever made the choice. I believe happiness is not a choice in the way the author believes. I think in this chapter, the author negated a lot of feelings people experience with this.

Eighteen Inches: The Distance Between the Heart and the Mind by Mirtha Michelle Castro Mármol

4.75 stars

This is a poetry and prose collection that focuses on the theme of there being eighteen inches between the heart and the mind and the battles that author faces with love, romance, religion, sexual assault, death, and cultural experiences. The introduction sets up the title of the book through a story where the author gets in a fight and the advice her father gives her afterwards. I loved the infusion of each chapter starting with prose and being followed by poetry. It worked so much for me. I thought the poems were beautiful and the prose was heart wrenching and steeped in honest words and experiences. I cried multiple times throughout reading the collection. I kept screenshotting poems and sending them to my best friend because they were so good. This collection was wonderful. It was full of pain, suffering, beauty, and hope. I loved the balance of prose and poetry. It was beautifully done and it worked so well. I will leave a trigger warning for date rape though because the chapter on it was very intense and goes though a wide of emotions before, after, and when the trauma comes back up after the author tried to bury it. This collection touches on many important topics and I want more readers to know about it. I can’t recommend this collection enough. It is worth reading and I have feeling it will not be popular because the cover is not as mainstream or appealing as most collections.


Whimsical Writing Scale: 4.5

Plotastic Scale: 5

Cover Thoughts: I love the blurred photograph, but it does kind of make me dizzy if I look at it for too long.

Thank you, Netgalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing, for providing me with a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

This book of poems is a very emotional and hard hitting read but very very worth reading. The book is set out in sections starting from 1" to 18"s and before each section of poems is a personal account written by the author as an introduction before the poems
And the best part is that each of the section starts with a personal account of introduction which is relevant and important for part and yes, the poetry lines becomes more meaningful after reading this detail at the beginning of each section.

This collection was so open and honest. Mirtha Michelle Castro Mármol digs deep into her trauma, faith, love, and more. That said, I just don't know if this collection was for me, but I know people in my life that this would be perfect for. Personally, the prose bogged me down. The flow of the eighteen parts also kind of messed with me. For example, some sections would have three poems while others would have seven. I loved her poems on loss and "the one that got away." These felt so real and I really understood her in those. But the ones on faith really felt surface level to me. This could be because the author and I have different faith views so I just don't understand where she's coming from with those. Overall this was a good collection, that I think you can find wisdom from at different points in your life.

This is definitely one of the more hard-hitting and unique poetry collections that I’ve read. Because of the different format, with a few pages at the beginning of each chapter dedicated to sharing the author’s experiences, I felt that each poem was very clearly meaningful. The organization of this collection really added to the depth of emotion I could feel with each poem. I would highly recommend this to anyone looking for more modern poetry that still retains a lot of pure emotion.

Today I am reading: Eighteen Inches by Mirtha Michelle Castro Marmol (@mirthamichelle, @mmcmcreative).

Another coming of age poetry book that tells the growth of a woman through many situations including, TW: rape, abortion, death; a broken heart in love and gaining strength through different trials. Each section begins with a prose piece about a situation in the writer’s life. These were the best parts because it gave context to the poems that followed.

I had a really hard time trying to decide what to rate this poetry collection, but in the end, the pros outweighed the cons, and overall, I really enjoyed it. Marmol has a very simplistic yet elegant poetry style that manages to be both gentle and brutally honest. I really, really loved the poems themselves, and I will be reading them in the future over and over.

However, with that being said I had two big issues with the book: I was not a fan of the short personal essays that started out each section. I would have much preferred that she had simply put the poems in the sections by themselves. They’re powerful enough without needed in to explain what ‘pain’ or ‘bravery’ is in a short essay. It was just unnecessary. The second thing was in one of these short essays, in section 13. Marmol states that “happiness is a choice”... I find this completely wrong and inaccurate; particularly for those suffering mental illness and hardship (which is what the majority of her poems are about). I think it’s borderline dangerous to slip something like that in trouble the book, particularly when those who will pick this poem collection up most likely suffer from some of the same issues she writes about. Between those two issues, I almost knocked the rating down to a 3/5, regardless of the gorgeous nature of her writing. All in all, however, I know that I enjoyed it immensely.

This was beautiful, heart warming, raw & truthful.

I was captivated by what this book brought, this was my first dip in the water for poetry and I was definitely taken on a ride. The honesty, the truthfulness of facing your heartbreak, love, mistakes and the decisions we make was absolutely so touching and it hit right at home.

Some poems did get to me, I found that they gave me light and comfort even though I didn’t know that’s what I needed. This was absolutely amazing and I could tell how much work and soul this author put into her craft. It’s like I have a look at her soul.

I did struggle to connect to some passages and that’s why this wasn’t 5 stars for me. But that doesn’t take away from my enjoyment of this book.


I received a copy of this in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you Netgalley

I received an advanced version of this book through NetGalley to review.

I personally had trouble connecting with the material and have some fundamental belief differences that made the poems and stories less impactful to me. However, I believe that others may find the tales of struggle and growth uplifting.

The book is structured into 18 sections each detailing an important topic in the author’s life. Following the short essay there are poems relating to the topic. Some of the material discussed may be triggering.

What first attracted me to this book was the stunning cover. But then, the explanation of what "eighteen inches" meant drew me in further with a sharp depiction of violence. Written with an aching vulnerability, Mármol tells her readers of things she used to only release into solitude. It is full of want and desperate for connection. This collection is full of pain from past memories and doesn't shy away from sharing them. It felt like she was trying to rebuild herself with her poetry and prose, by talking through what she'd experienced in life and coming to new realizations about her hurt and healing. I preferred her prose to her poetry. Her poetry often ended with a mantra of sorts serving a reminder for healing. I felt like there was more insight to be gained from her prose. It was a beautiful intimacy. #eighteeninches #netgalley

Eighteen Inches is a very soulful collection of thoughts. I found I definitely did not agree with every idea of feeling but could somewhat understand them. Beautifully presented. Thanks to the publisher and Net Galley for my copy to read and review

This book shook me to my core. I had yet to read poetry and prose as powerful and relatable as this collection. There were so many truths spoken that my heart broke both for myself and the author. Then with those same words she brought hope and light and stitched my heart back together again. The formatting of this book was a mix of prose which was written like a memoir about the author's experiences and then followed by poetry. The poetry was of course stunning in itself. It was powerful and packed a punch. However, the parts that really got me, surprisingly was the prose. I don't read memoirs and the style of the prose read like one, but I didn't mind it one bit because each word that was articulated by the author was meant to be there, meant to open the reader's heart to their own experiences that were similar. Each prose piece felt like I was reading a moment out of a fictional story instead of someone's actual life. The themes of this book centered around love, all kinds of it, romantic, platonic, familial, etc. It filled my own heart with so much hope it genuinely might have burst. But these weren't the only themes. Marmol was successfully able to intertwine her life experiences with huge life lessons that really opened my eyes to a whole new perspective to view the world from. I found a piece of myself in each of her stories even though they were personal ones, there was a part of each that I read over and over and took me into my own mind through my own memories. I'm just in awe of the writing and how much I fell in love with this book. I wasn't expecting it at all. I was completely captivated the whole time and though there were some ideas that I didn't necessarily agree with, it was a perspective that I appreciated and could implement into my own life. This book will remain on my mind for a long time.

"My heart feels heavy
There are a thousand silent bricks weighing
it down
with my yearning.
It is my soul yearning for him.
At times I feel a magnetic pull toward him,
wherever in the world he might be.
It is my soul dancing toward him.

I imagine his face,
just as it was the last time I saw him.
I can trace every feature and line.
A tear trickles from my right eye.
While in my transient state—
I wonder can he feel me thinking of him?
I wonder can he feel me feeling him?

The unexplainable science of missing someone's energy"
Thank you NetGalley and Andrews McMeel for providing me with a temporary e-arc.
'Eighteen Inches' is a collection of poetry and essays of one woman’s account on her longing to know herself fully. Her mind, body, and soul. This book is a battlefield between a woman’s beat, exploring the distance between the head and the heart—and all of the pain, beauty, and hope in between.

Divided into 18 sections: Pain, Destiny, Brave, Pride, Death, Experience, Faith, Doubt, Selfishness, Intimacy, Sex, Fulfillment, Happiness, Patience, Adventure, Identity, Purpose and Love- 'Eighteen Inches' is a collection of piercing and emotive poems and essays with heart-rending beauty and strength, exploring the vulnerable emotions and experiences that connects with a woman's heart and makes her mind ponder upon the ideas of her past, present and future's existence.
The sections are divided chronologically exploring the journey to acceptance of a woman's truth. Each section begins with a personal essay by Michelle exploring the theme of the section and is followed by modern poetry of different lengths and styles. The sole thought behind this collection is for you to feel. Feeling and knowing your truth. Owning up to your truth with all the love you could spare for your self before anything.

You can sense that each section is crafted right from the heart and mind of Michelle with a pure sense of honesty and each one of those puts forward her journey into becoming the strong person she is now. Her writings can be inspiring, empowering, spiritual, nostalgic, and triggering, at times. As many have stated before in their reviews, please practise self-care while reading this collection and familiarise yourself with trigger warnings which the book should be coming along with.

I loved the collection but I feel the need to mention this in my review as many others have already done. In the 13th section, Michelle says in her essay and I quote: "Happiness is a choice." which one cannot brush away. Personally, I did not have any issues with the essay until I came to the passage in which it has been quoted as such. And the tone of that passage makes it factual rather than, "in my opinion". It is kind of offensive and problematic to those suffering from mental illness. So this was easily a 5-star read but it's going to be 4.5 for me.

This is one of those books that is really hard to review because it is filled with writings that are so raw and vulnerable. You cannot judge vulnerability. You can only judge the facades that cover them but this is too raw for me to give my honest opinion. It is a must-read and I know that this is the first review that I cannot be entirely honest in but I am truly honest when I say that this will resonate with hearts and minds of many!

3/5 stars

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing this e-arc

I really liked some of the poems and almost all of the chapter initial stories. I'm now just slowly realizing poetry isn't the genre for me