Special shout out to the cover art of this book - Stunning! Very eye catching and beautiful. One of the reasons I initially looked into this collection.

Now for the review,

The Smallest of Bones can only be described as dark, confusing, and very abstract. I won't say i'm an expert on poetry and what is good or not, but this collection was...weird. The themes within the collection was what enticed me at first glance and upon reading I was intrigued by the formatting of the poems and the content. Each section begins with a short explanation of a different bone in the body and it's functions, and then said bones are interweave into the section of poetry to follow. I really enjoyed that set up. The formatting was something that was left to be desired - especially when reading it in a online format. I recommend reading a hard copy version if possible. It was very difficult to decipher what was meant to be in what order due to the way it was formatted.

As for the poems themselves I found most of them to be beautifully written in a strange way, but I just didn't connect with them at all. I was excited because every previous review I saw before I read there was mentions of everything I love in poetry, but ultimately it just didn't hook me. I did mention I am not an expert on poetry so I'm sure others will enjoy this collection and find the connection that I was unable to have.

Overall, The Smallest of Bones is a quick read and a very strange collection of poems that focus on topics like queerness, sexuality, ghosts, and many more very important topics that will either resonate fully with you or leave you with a sense of confusion at what you just read. Read it yourself and find out where you fall.

Special Thanks to Netgalley for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest opinion.

A collection of tiny horror poems sometimes reminding me of Carmen Maria Machado's prose in Her Body and Other Parties depicting themes of body, love, sexuality, queerness, gender identity, and horror elements like ghosts, demons, dreamscapes, and visceral images. The poet has taken inspiration from certain bones of human body such as sacrum, sternum, skull, spine, etc. and blends biology, horror, and raw emotions in the poems. Poetry review is almost always subjective. It's hard not to feel a certain glee when you discover hidden gems like this. Especially for a reader of horror novels. The poems sometimes digress from the central bone-emotion metaphoric pairs to other imageries and that is a flaw I found in this collection.

It's a common knowledge that the Victorians amplified the art of grief, bereavement, and the macabre. I remember reading about tear catchers and memento mori for a drawing couple of years ago. The birds in the rib cage on the cover page intone that age when mortality was seen, celebrated, and lived with grace and collective reverence. Thanks to Netgalley for this ARC for an early review.

"I think we write about ourselves so we can become creatures"

This was a very unique book of poetry in the way it was shaped and in the way it was presented. I loved loved loved the bones part, and that's what makes this a unique collection. My favourite thing about the book might actually be the introductions to every section, and how there was a general or etymological explanation on the bones and then linking them to deeper topics, generally on women. There was mention of sexuality, violence, gender, trauma, grief, the body... it felt very dark at times. My favourite section was the one titled "Spine"; both the introduction and the poems in that part were the ones that resonated the most with me.

"the very preciousness of you
beside me and sleeping

god I love the things I hate"

There were some parts I thoroughly enjoyed, but also some that didn't make much sense. I get that this is what modern poetry has become, sometimes more about the aesthetic than the actual content at times, and not even the meaning but the structure. Maybe the one problem with this was that the synopsis didn't match the contents that much. The idea was so good! But it ended up being quite an average read in terms of the poems themselves. Nevertheless, it is a very original collection and it's conceived beautifully, and I enjoyed reading it.

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.

It's been...quite some time since I've read poetry, even longer (never) since I really dug into horror and dark poetry. I thought I'd give this collection of poems by Holly Lyn Walrath a try, and I am so glad that I did.

The concept is really beautiful, exploring the human experience, sexuality, femininity, relationships, the body, and so much more through different bones. The poems feel like a cohesive bunch, with a clear voice. The writing style is abstract, but not so much that you aren't able to grab onto pieces and really feel them, deep in your gut.

While not every poem was for me to connect to, most had something about them that held me there in relation to it. Some were certainly better than others, and there were more than a few lines that made me actually quiver inside with how hard they struck.

The e-book ARC I read from NetGalley was a little messy so it jumbled the flow sometimes, but this is a book I could see myself reading again.

Thank you for reminding me that poetry is really something to contend with, and introducing me to the dark beauty you had to offer.

*Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ARC of this title.

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."

I did not like this poetry collection. I've read a lot of poetry collections lately and it's so strange how the most recent ones are all clipped and follow the same, short, bite-sized and Tumblr-stylized type of writing style.

I found the beginning of this book interesting, and I enjoyed a selective few of the descriptions and poems, but as it progressed, I think it lacked a good writing style, concise topics and depth.

The book tried to be 'deep' but it touched upon topics briefly and then was either extremely vague/abstract about them or never even made a point.

The majority of these poems did not make sense whatsoever. I do not like books that try to be 'abstract' by confusing the living daylights out of their readers, and this short and boring style of writing is not my taste.

So normally Poetry is not my thing.. well I can’t really say that, because I’ve only had like poetry we were forced to read in high school and then I’ve read Milk & Honey by Rupi Kaur... but after reading that last one, I know poetry wasn’t for me, cause ( very unpopular opinion) I did not like it one bit.

But I said, let’s give this genre another try shall we ? And so I did. And shockingly, I liked it. I liked The Smallest Of Bones, because it was special. Because the poetry read like poetry and not some insta or tumble caption, like in my opinion, most of the poetry nowadays.

She wrote some informations about different body parts, and only after started the poems. I think it was a very easy read, and it was short. Which I also liked, cause poetry books of 200 pages, just no.
So this one was good, it maybe me think about reading more poetry... but I still have to think about it

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