This is a masterpiece in both concept and execution. I love the structure of this collection and that it feels like cracking open someone's diary to find an assortment of thoughts. There are so many lines that I have high lighted and have really loved looking back through. This seems like it will reward a reread in its entirety so I'm excited to pick up a physical copy of it.

A beautiful long poem-memoir-field-study, a reflection on black womanhood and love. It's the sort of thing you can read in an afternoon, but that you then find yourself flipping back to on later days, revisiting a section here or a line there.

5 stars
In the acknowledgments of this book Chet’la describes her mind as a palace. And palace it is. When I was not reading about field study I was thinking about it and dreaming about it. Because this was a netgalley the formatting was not in its final form. I would have vivid dreams of going to the bookstore to pick up a physical copy once this book is released and being in awe at the formatting. I can’t wait to get a physical copy!

Field study is about the authors experience being a black women and dating both black and white men. This book is a perfect mix of prose and poem. Things get messy while remaining real, detailing how life isn’t linear.

⚠️⚠️⚠️
There is a smattering of micro-aggressions and fetishizing in this one.

Thank you Chet’la for creating this masterpiece
Thank you to fsg and netgalley for the ARC

Raw. Real. Thought provoking.

I really enjoyed learning and listening from a new perspective. This is one where I feel like the people that really need to read it will pass by it unfortunately. But I would recommend for sure!

"To forget a wound and scratch it issues a special kind of pain—the pain of the wound and the pain of having to acknowledge it's no longer forgotten. The second sometimes hurts more than the first."

Chet'la Sebree's Field Study is a beautiful, meditative exploration of herself in the aftermath of a relationship with a white man as she seeks to catalog and understand her emotions and her existence as a Black woman in a white society. Intermingling her lyrical poeticisms with quotes from Black thinkers, TV shows, and even tweets, this work has such a unique feel that creates a complex, layered dialogue between Sebree and the culture at large, putting her feelings, desires, and experiences into context.

For those who are maybe afraid to dip your toes into poetry, this piece would be a great starting point because it's so inviting and easy to read, while still giving you stunning prose and unique imagery that I found incredibly compelling such as:

"I believe in rhyme and reason, in a season's final scene. I want to believe that I can be whole with a hole in me."

"But really, we were both trying to mosaic—drawing blood on each other's sharp edges."

"I want his fingertips to smooth over me slowly—fingerprint and follicle in holy union."

There was so much beautiful language, I made ample use of my Kindle's highlighting feature. As a poet, I found it very inspiring and as a person who has experienced a fair amount of heartbreak and trauma over past relationships, her exploration of her past loves was very relatable and made me turn over and inspect my own feelings with a new perspective (all the best poetry should do this!).

My only critique would be that some of the sections were very short (sometimes just 1 line) discussing something that seemed very interesting, so I would have appreciated more expansion on them. But, overall, this is a wonderful poetic work of self exploration that is poignant and thought-provoking throughout, and is incredibly impactful for being such a quick read.

I would recommend this to anyone even mildly interested in poetry, or anyone who enjoys stream of conciousness-type works. This is a wonderful book that can't be missed!

Field Study is a complex, compelling poetry collection by Chet'la Sebree. In this collection the poet explores romance, race, femininity, and where all of these merge together in life's big gray area. The collection's form is short thoughts and quotes mixed together to tell a narrative that had many facets, but always brings it back the the poet's sense of self. It is by far a recommended read for anyone who loves to dive into a good book of poetry.

"is this a poem, a prose, a prayer?" i also had this question while reading-- i would call this a collection of field notes before anything else (though my next description would be an epic poem). this collection pushes you to make the connections between the bits and pieces of love, race, family, forgiveness (and it's lack there of), memory, and more. i was really struck by the large amount of epigraphs which created a dialogue between Sebree and the many speakers of the quotes.

What a captivating collection. Reminds me of Maggie Nelson and Rebecca Solnit, but with a more diverse and particular voice and lived experience. Really incredible writing and prose, easy to dip in and out of throughout the week.

An incredible reflection on Black womanhood. This is a prose poem using a fragmentary style to intersperse thoughts and quotations from prolific Black voices to examine Sebree's personhood, particularly in light of her relationship with a white man and the impact it had on her. The writing is mesmerizing, the book is chock full of brilliant insights and demands a reread. Sebree is an exciting new voice and I cannot wait to read her next work.

Chet’la Sebree interweaves poetry with literary quotes with pop culture to discuss her experience with love, womanhood, sex, and Blackness in America. This collection was so beautifully written and I loved the incorporation of quotations. This prose poetry book goes to the top of my recommendations, holding both devasting social truths and observations, as well as musings on modern love and interracial romance.

Chet'la Sebree's self exploration in Field Study was sharp, vulnerable, and all together stunning. Her reflections on race, interracial love, and heartbreak are deeply personal and complex. Her poetry is gripping. I'm so glad to have found this volume. I highly recommend reading Field Study.

Sebree has created a poetry collection in which mental health is entwined with Black female identity, the racial tensions that women feel from all sides, and the responsibility they have to project a sense that they are indeed whole. “No matter how far I go, there is never enough makeup for the bullet hole.” Field Study by Chet’la Sebree, which publishes in June, worries and rationalizes and assesses herself like a scientist. Her observations are keen and deeply probing, and she doesn’t let up on herself. This is a frank look at one woman’s struggle with desire and identity, but it has universal applications to others in all communities — less judgment and more love. Definitely not your typical, confessional poetry collection — it’s much more.

This poetry book is simply not for me. I am sure Sebree has meaningful things to say, but I cannot discern what they are. Almost every sentence is its own thought and separated from the next. It feels like ideas for poems more than actual poems.

Field Study put everything else of pause. It’s Stream of consciousness, yet studied narration. It was reference on reference. It was a light looking inside. It was a question and answer. Memory. Accusation. Analysis. Love.

She dedicates: “for people seeking whole with the holes they see.”

Engaging with Chet’la Sebree’s work has reminded me the dark truths brought forward can glow. That you have to steady yourself to let people look at the real you. But maybe then, you are closer to free.

From her work, I’ve gained new study. Things researched, things remembered, and for that, the gratitude radiates across the internet. I want you to read this. I want you to hold your breath like I did. I want you to look up in the mirror every few lines and re-examine yourself. I want you to reconsider the word study.

Not so much a book of poetry as a string of loosely connected tweets, complete with banal quotes from tv shows. Honestly, the only thing poetic about this is its stream-of-consciousness.

This book! A razor-edged, deft and devastating invention; the fragmented form is so perfectly equipped to express the flickerings and wounds and near-brushes that Sebree so gorgeously, achingly articulates. I love the collaging of ruins, in a way, that Sebree glues together here, with such sharp velocity in the turns of phrase and the affect / structure that emerges from the cut-up. A field study, indeed; turning to a specific narrative model to express what so totally resists narrativizing and interrogating itself without losing ardor or steam. So, so good. Also: I think there's always this latent urge to compare any fragmented books such as this one to Nelson or Offill—but the thing is, Sebree leans into the ways in which influences converge and move together or conflict, but but but——there is a style here entirely Sebree's own, entirely self-constructed and tender towards its own history and still totally original, even scathing.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

"Field Study" by Chet'la Sebree is a poetry collection that covers some interesting topics, mostly based on romantic relationships and race.

I liked the themes handled and the visibility that was given to interracial relationships (or as Chet'la described it: interracial desire.) "Were white men my kink?" is one of the questions she faces at some point in the book, showing the difficulty of love outside of your race and the guilt put on your shoulders by society. Also, other battles that BIPOC have faced just because of their [our] skin color are also brought to the conversation. To set an example, here's a passage that stayed with me:

"Note: I ask a few Black friends if they consider me light-skinned.
One: [laughs hysterically]
Another: depends on who you're asking."

The book reads mostly like someone else's thoughts put into the paper rather than the traditional poetry we are used to. The collection was nice to read but at the same time, I felt like it was a little disorganized and incomplete. Some passages were too short (like one sentence short) and I would've liked the author to dive deeper into them, to explore those topics more. In my opinion, a collection of essays would've been a better presentation to portray these thoughts. I'll still be looking forward to the next project by this author since I think she has a lot of potential.