Thank you for providing me with an arc. I found the novel to be overall quite thoughtful and thought-provoking! I wasn’t sure this would be as good as it was and it exceeded my expectations. I am definitely looking forward to what this author is going to put our next! Thank you for providing me with an arc. I found the novel to be overall quite thoughtful and thought-provoking! I wasn’t sure this would be as good as it was and it exceeded my expectations. I am definitely looking forward to what this author is going to put our next!

"Make an earnest effort to look for whatever you want."

This book was a journey that went through everything and reached its destination. It was an enjoyable collection of poems.

Thank you, NetGalley for providing an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The accomplished and incisive poems in Stella Beratlis’ second collection, ‘Dust Bowl Venus’, have stayed with me since I closed the slim book. She writes poetry about California’s Central Valley and its often alien nature but it is the poems about her grief and fear related to her daughter’s cancer diagnosis that touched me. Poems such as ‘water wealth contentment health’, ‘Castle of the Mountain’, ‘A Mistaken Analogy Concerning Demeter and Persephone’, ‘Galvanized Gutbucket’, ‘Animal, Mineral, Vegetable’, ‘Republic of Tenderness and Bread’ and ‘The edge of the sea’ brought tears to my eyes. This collection is so poignant, so vulnerable, so honest, so cellular, that many of the poems will touch your heart.

*

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral

You don’t dare look at the shroud
across the mediastinum

behind the breastbone.
Terror builds cell by sticky cell,

the consistency of a potato, the surgeon said,
and I wondered

did he mean raw or cooked. Fear takes root,
an entire potato establishing itself

behind the breastbone.
The site of fear: the chest

as a root cellar, a vine pushing out
from the eye of a potato,

it’s own uncanny thing.
The tumour has a consistency,

one of not-breathing
and of panic. My fear

a tiny node of boiled potato,
such a small thing,

a small thing that swallows the entire sun.

*

Stella Beratlis grew up in a second-generation Greek-American family in Northern California. Her first collection of poems, ‘Alkali Sink’, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2015. Her second collection of poetry, ‘Dust Bowl Venus: Poems’ (2021) is also published by Sixteen Rivers Press.

Her work has appeared in numerous journals including ‘Harbour, ‘Penumbra’, ‘Song of the San Joaquin’, ‘In-Posse Review’ and ‘California Quarterly’, as well as in the anthologies ‘The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems from the San Francisco Bay Watershed’ (Sixteen Rivers Press; 2010) and ‘California Fire and Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology’ (Story Streets, 2020).

She is coeditor of the collection ‘More Than Soil; More Than Sky: Modesto Poets’ (Quercus Review Press, 2011) and served as the poet laureate of Modesto from 2016-2020. Beratlis lives in Modesto and is a librarian there.

*

A huge thank you to @NetGalley and @SixteenRiversPress for an ARC of ‘Dust Bowl Venus: Poems’ by Stella Beratlis.

A lyrical and accomplished collection that may well speak more to the American reader. For me, it was beautiful, but a little laboured and left me cold, lacking in emotional connection.

Thank you, Net Galley, for gifting me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I have to give Stella Beratlis credit where it's due--in a field currently being devoured by fragment sentences, her poems stand out for their breadth, and for giving the reader something to chew on. Beratlis doesn't spell everything out for her audience, instead presenting them with her musings and leaving them to contemplate the greater meaning.

Poetry is a subjective art, however, and while Dust Bowl Venus will likely entice many readers, I found most of it to be, well, boring. There were a few stand-out pieces, such as "Prayer for You on the Way to Wherever You're Going" and "The edge of the sea," but otherwise, the collection failed to deliver anything truly moving or memorable.

"let's rebuild our cells with clay and time"

a wonderful second collection! i love a collection tied together in a more abstract way, i felt the poems all conversing but not explicitly. they are poems of time & loss & love. i was particularly moved by the pastoral imagery that was firmly Californian (& appreciated the notes in the back!)

I was particularly interested in this title because of my geographic location; I'm very familiar with california's central valley and was curious to see how it played into the content. The poetry in Dust Bowl Venus evokes a melody of the author, a country-bluegrass songwriter, with quiet beauty and imagery that could stick with you for a while. Loss, life, everything in-between.

Rarely do I come across a collection of poetry that suits my tastes so well. The descriptions and scenarios described within were both ordinary and extraordinary. I loved Beratlis's use of language, and nothing about this felt stilted or as though it were trying too hard. It felt as though the author deeply loved the place about which she was writing, and that made me, as the reader, feel a strong affection for it, as well.

A great collection of poems going through the life of the author. Both the ups and downs of lifes troubles and glories. My favourite poem is called prayer for you on the way to where you're going. I especially liked this poem because it makes you feel like you can achieve things, you have a sense your part of something big. The end of the book has a great list of the terms used and what they mean to the author it was a please to read and thank you.
Already posted on good reads and across other social platforms. Once again thank for letting me review the title.

The poetry in “Dust Bowl Venus” is rousing, musical work. One is reminded of the howl of classic country singers, the midnight jangle on the radio, because Stella Beratlis’s words are impossible to parse without a thorough background in Americana. This is poetry about the working class, about lost dreams spread flat over the horizon. My favorite of the collection was “All About Birds: An Elegy”, in which Beratlis declares that the history of the world is a murder ballad. Some poems here are stronger than others, but the ones that capture you are lyrical and insightful, and somehow familiar, saying what you always suspected and never voiced.

With "Dust Bowl Venus," former Modesto, California poet laureate Stella Beratlis releases into the world her latest poetry collection. It's a collection that embraces, at times with great resignation, the bones of people and places and things. The Great Central Valley captured by Beratlis is a landscape of wonder where the we practically bathe in the tenderness of its dust.

It was the word "tenderness," my favorite word in life, that came forth time and again in "Dust Bowl Venus." It wasn't always on the written page but in the way Beratlis connects her experiences across the spectrum of life. Beratlis irrevocably intertwines both person and place and recognizes that our fragile relationship is dependent upon one another.

Indeed, Beratlis's poetry personifies the natural experience in wondrous ways. We give life to place and our place gives life to us.

We experience illness and death and tragedy and renewal just as is experienced in the world around us.

"Dust Bowl Venus" was such a compelling collection that I immediately began exploring Beratlis's other work including her 2015 collection "Alkali Sink." To be released in May 2021 by Sixteen Rivers Press, a Northern California publishing collective, "Dust Bowl Venus" is framed by the lyrics of Modesto-based country-bluegrass songwriter Hazel Houser and it is Beratlis's ability to capture Houser's unique rhythms that helps to turn "Dust Bowl Venus" into such a captivating and immersive experience.

I always shudder when I think about citing favorite poems, but there are always those that resonate more deeply. For me, "The Republic of Tenderness and Bread" made me weep while "How to Possibly Find Something or Someone by Praying" sent me deep into reflection. "Inventory of Household Items" brought a weird smile to my face and "All About Birds: An Elegy," seemed to come out of nowhere and yet everywhere.

"Regret Bench?" Sublime and so visual.

There are others. Truthfully, I loved this collection. I loved the framework of meaning provided toward collection's end. However, I also appreciated reading the collection independent of this framework and allowing the words to form meaning for me.

This is how we become. Indeed.

The poetry in here is absolutely phenomenal and really makes you want to disappear inside its page. As someone who loves poetry, it's so nice to come across new poets! Definitely worth checking out.

Poetry anchored in place. A valiant effort, but the collection was ultimately not for me. I did not finish the collection as my interest waned early.

Thanks to NetGalley and Sixteen Rivers Press for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. The way I felt about individual poems varied greatly; I really loved some (more on that below), but others felt like they were trying too hard to sound clever, rather than describing things in a clear or evocative way—using big words, describing things in unusual ways that didn't add to the poems, in my opinion. But this collection overall really has a history; you can feel the strong connections to place and to the past. Despite this, the overwhelming feeling as a reader isn't one of nostalgia, but more a sort of appreciation and understanding, as well as hopefulness.

I loved the structure and rhythm of many of the poems; the third section of "What Grows Here," for instance, was beautiful in terms of its feel, look, and sound. The stanzas of so many poems—"Inventory of Household Items," "Galvanized Gutbucket," "Ode on a BIC Turntable"—were engaging and worked really well in this context.

Other poems like "Perfect Love Song," "Oramil's Dream," "I love you in autumn," and "Ode to North Bay Inn" felt to me like somewhat of a departure from the preceding poems, in a way I really liked. They really captivated me, and left me wanting more of that style in the rest of the collection.

The phrase "my love" was repeated in multiple poems, and I loved the feeling that gave to the collection overall.

The "Notes" section at the end was really illuminating on some of the specifics of the poems, and provided important context for them. I really appreciated all of this, but I almost wish the notes had been underneath individual poems—I don't think the author owes us any explanations, but if you're going to provide them, then I think they'd be more impactful just after they're used, rather than so far removed at the end that a reader might forget their role in the poems.

To end, I just want to share a couple of my favorite lines/sections:

from "All About Birds: An Elegy":
"/In the first place/
refers, my love,
to the peaches we ate on the balcony;
refers, my love,
to the months you first loved me,"

from "H2O":
"If my credit score were higher,
we'd be married, Modesto."

from "Root-Cause Failure Analysis":
"please consider all the ways a thing can go wrong,"

from "A Dream About Steinhart Aquarium":
"The mouth waters; the tide goes out."