I think that the author discussed many interesting topics in this poetry collection however I feel that every poem was so short that the topic was never fully fleshed out no pun intended. I never clicked with the writing style because for me it felt like it was written with the Tumblr user in mind and was meant to be oh so quotable. It just didn't do it for me.

I did'nt connect with it at all, it felt blurry and confusing. It tried to be deep talking about some things but were only grazing the surface and very vague. The only thing I could get is that it was dark. There was a good idea though, it has potential.

I love the concept of this, mixing information from medical books/information about bones with poetry. There were a few lines I loved, like "because even our bones are made for what men want". The layout was a bit weird looking, but I think that's because I read it on my Kindle, and it messed it up a bit.

Over the past few months, I have been getting back into reading poetry and this is a book that I am glad to have read. The connection that the author created between the bones of the body and the poems that they wrote was incredible. Each section of the book was demoted by a certain bone and that was a creative endeavor that I really enjoyed.

It's always hard for me to review poetry because it is just a personal thing to me and the experiences that I have reading it and unique, so the most I can do is share it with others so they can have their own experiences.

I’m quite honestly not the best with poetry I don’t understand some of the metaphorical writing but what I did understand I loved! Some the the lines in this was outstanding the lines about love hit me hard. I may be wrong but some of the poems reminded me of a toxic and or abusive relationship with a partner. Definitely not what I was expecting but very impactful.

I think the only reason it wasn’t five stars was the formatting but I know some poems do this to highlight specific things I just never really enjoy it as much.

Thanks to Netgalley and to the publisher for the ARC in exchange of an honest review

The first thing that caught my attention was the beautiful cover and then I decided to read this book because I wanted to read some poetry.

While I was reading the book, I liked that it gives information about the parts of the body, but the book wasn't for me. I was hoping to like a few poems, and even thought there were like two that I liked. none of them was special or left a big impression on me.

2 ⭐

"my body is two-thirds
whiskey
and one-third
ghosts"

A short and haunting collection of dark poetry centered on the bones of the human body, identity, and relationships. There were some great lines that really resinated with me (see above) and I loved the interplay of the semi-scientific introductions to each section with the poems that followed. It was a very fast read, and was definitely left wanting more. I'm looking forward to seeing a hard copy of this, as I think the formatting of the eARC I read did not do the content any favors. Also, I love the cover of this book!

I am grateful to CLASH Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review The Smallest Bone.

I’m slowly getting into poetry and I feel that this book is helping to expand my knowledge. The structure of the poems kept throwing me off a bit and I think that’s why I had trouble understanding some of the poems. But I’m planning to reread these to see if I can grasp them better.

The Smallest of Bones is a strange poetry collection, split into different sections named after various bones. I did not really enjoy this, as it was strangely formatted, and hard to tell where one poem ended and another began.

"Hiding our hearts is easy when we have so many bones"

"A man
once asked how I got so thin
I told him I was made of glass"

The Smallest of Bones by Holly Lyn Walrath is an amazing, beautiful, and powerful collection! With shards of bone and glass I felt safe to curl up between my ribcage right alongside the little ball of pain I've lodged there for safe keeping, and truly explore myself, my experiences, and the world in relation to everything from sexuality to religion to the darkness that comes along with being alive.

Perhaps it is because I myself have always used bone's and the human body in my own private writing to express various feelings I was forcefully drawn to this collection for word one. I literally could not put it down (I tried, lasted all of five minutes) and I felt a strange rush of comfort and connection with the words so perfectly chosen by Holly Lyn Walrath. It is a collection that I will be purchasing for my own collection as soon as I possibly can, for there is a spot on my shelf screaming to be filled with this book and only this book. I have been searching for a collection like this for so long, I feel like I can finally breathe having finally found The Smallest of Bones which far exceeded anything I had hoped to find.

Highly recommended!

Thank you so much to Netgalley, and of course Holly Lyn Walrath and publishers for granting me an ecopy in exchange for my honest opinion. I can happily and truthfully lend my opinion.

"Because even our bones are made for what men want. Because as hard as we try to be sacred, they can always use us for sacrifice."

What an extraordinary poetry collection! I could cite dozens of lines I loved, lines that broke open some unconscious thought or feeling, lines that downright annihilated me. Walrath's poetry engages with the queer experience in a way I found hauntingly authentic, portraying the many ways queer women learn to hate ourselves and that which we love--especially if it's other women.

"and sometimes I pray for you I can't help it
it's something they taught me"

There's a third line that runs underneath this collection: religion. I enjoyed how many of the poems played with ideas of the profane and the sacred, showing how blurry the line can be between. This collection asks us: who gets to decide what is sacred, what is holy? As an ex-vangelical agnostic, this resonated a lot, and I believe many queer readers of faith will find it highly relatable. How do you have a relationship with a religion that purports to hate you and the way you love? The Smallest of Bones doesn't necessarily have solutions, but it takes the reader's hand in the darkness of their most isolating feelings and says, me too. I feel that way too.

Highly recommended.

This is a beautiful book of poetry. If you want something that will make you think, feel, and be inspired read this book! I enjoyed the structure of the book going through bones. My favorite poem was "Sternum."

This is a visceral, intelligent, outstanding work full of forward momentum and the grabbing of ideas and the body and wrestling with conventions and finally kicking them out the door. It's a collection of poetry inspired by parts and places of the body, and about body, and being a woman, and loving women and their bodies, and rejecting the status quo and the male gaze and grappling with self-image. I want to give copies to every woman I know, and I want to teach it in high schools, and I want everyone talking about it, and I want to read more by this author right now.

A short, vivid and visceral exploration of sexuality, abuse and bodily autonomy. I never quite know how to review poetry aside from how much I connect and feel whilst reading this and I definitely connected and felt the pain of the author. I also thought that the metaphor of old-fashioned anatomy did a great job of capturing the themes of this poems

Read this book out loud. The words tumble around, blending anatomy, love, and something deeper to create a subtle current that pulls you further into this complex mixture of poems.
The author uses the anatomy of skeletal bones to convey the deep, complex feelings of love, passion, heartbreak, and. infatuation. This was a unique reading experience that challenges the reader to process all of these emotions.
This isn’t a long book, which is good, because you will want to go back and read this more than once!

I loved the concept, cover and title – but unfortunately this book just didn't work for me. It could be that the formatting got messed up when it was sent to my Kindle (I have a very old Kindle), so I missed some of the meaning conveyed by the correct line breaks or page breaks. But even considering that, this one really didn't speak to me. I found the non-fiction interludes interesting, but the poetry itself felt a little shallow to me, and it didn't spark anything in me the way that the best poetry does.

This was just okay. I really liked the information interludes, but I thought the poetry itself was lacking. I wish there had been a few longer form poems to break up the sparse prose as it did get repetitive. Still a nice collection, and it would appeal to fans of text/tumblr poetry.

This was beautiful and powerful. I’m not sure I would consider it horror, but it was a quick good read nonetheless.

I really wanted to like this book of poetry. I thought the description was very interesting and the cover is absolutely gorgeous. I was expecting this this book to be a lot more dark and severe than it was based on the description. Another reviewer used the word “macabre” to describe what they were expecting and I definitely felt the same way in my own expectations. But this one just fell flat. I felt like there were a lot of mixed metaphors that didn’t make sense and some other pieces just felt very disjointed. I loved the language but found myself getting lost trying to find the tone of each piece and the collection as a whole.

This is a gorgeous collection of poetry. A recommended purchase for collections looking to expand their poetry offerings.