Enjoyed the pinches of myth and the rhythm of the poems. I read a couple months ago, so I do not remember specifics, but I enjoyed this collection.

There were some really gorgeous lines, such as "Though at times I feel the trees, rocking in place / Like grief, clenching the dirt." Unfortunately, I'm not wholly one for whom form works; the rhyme decenters me from other beauties in the language. I appreciated the craft, however, quite deeply. AE Stallings is remarkable, and if you have a love for allusions in poetry or well structured pieces, this would be a lovely book for you.

2 out of 5 stars.
This poetry collection was not for me but if you like fantasy and mythology-based poetry this would be amazing for you. I went out of my set of taste by picking this up and regretted it because I really just didn't enjoy the story aspect of this. The writing was a bit confusing for me at times as well, but there were a few poems I really did enjoy, they just didn't shine over the rest of the collection though.

Disclaimer: I received a digital arc copy of this from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

While I am not a fan of formalism, I still find some of these poems to be quite striking. Other times, the poems feel stunted by the forms. That being said, when it works, it shines, and I feel as though those bright spots would work really well in an academic/instructional setting.

I loved the idea of this poetry collection, but the style just didn't do it for me. If you like poetry that is a bit longer (poems over 1 page) and is written in a prosy type style inspired by Greek myths, then I think you would really enjoy this. I typically don't like poems that are over a page, and if I do I have to find them really poignant or be really gripped by the writing style, and that unfortunately didn't happen here. I think especially for poetry which has so many different forms, what makes a good poetry book is often just a question of taste.

This Afterlife is a collection of poems (and a few translations) from A. E. Stallings ranging from 1999 to within the past few years. That’s a good few decades worth of work, but Stallings I admit is new to me (not that this is saying much, my poetry reading is sporadic at best). But I’ll be checking out other books by this author after reading these selected poems.

Many, most at a rough guess and especially so of the early works, of the poems have a connection to classical myths, as even a cursory glance simply at the titles will tell you, a few of which include: “Hades Welcomes His Bride”, “Persephone Writes a Letter to Her Mother”, “Medea, Homesick, and “Persephone to Psyche”.

One certainly doesn’t need a working knowledge of Greek/Roman myth to appreciate the poems’ language, structured meter and rhyme, or most of their sharper points, though it’s also true some such knowledge will make for a richer experience. It’s also true that most of these myth-based poems aren’t located solely in ancient times or experience, but instead are a melding of the ancient and the modern, sometimes literally so — moving back and forth between the two in setting or language or both — and sometimes more in thought or theme.

In “First Love: A Quiz” for instance, one of the more playfully experimental poems, written int eh form of a multiple-choice test, we get the typical “bad boy” appeal: “He came up to me/in his souped-up Camaro”. But these “answers” of the test are juxtaposed with other answers such as, “He came to me/from the ground, in a lead chariot drawn by a/team of stallion . . . /breathing sulfur”

One of my personal favorite is the aforementioned Persephone Writes a Letter to Her Mother”, written of course from Hades which is “not so far underground”, so near in fact the surface that Persephone “can just make out the crunch of footsteps/The pop of acorns falling, or the chime/Of a shovel squaring a fresh grave or turning/Up the tulip bulbs for separation.” Note the melding of life and death, as well as the careful attention to sound — the “O” of “pop, “of” “shovel”; the “u”, the “t” and more.

Stallings also presents the reader with an unexpected Hades (the god, not the place), something she does multiple times in these poems, as in “Arachne Gives Thanks to Athena”, where the old tale of Arachne being cursed by the goddess is, in Arachne’s own voice, “no punishment. They are mistaken/… My prayers were answered.” I won’t spoil the poem’s close, save to say it is as beautiful as it is unexpected.

The poems not centered on classical myths often focus on the domestic realm: parenting, a busted washing machine, a cast iron skillet needing to be reseasoned. I confess I found these less satisfying generally: not as sharply edged, a bit too neatly rounded off especially at the closes, but that’s not true for all of them, and the word/sound play remains consistently high throughout.

I’m typically satisfied when half the poems or short stories in a collection speak to me ins some fashion and am thrilled at three-quarters. This Afterlife easily cleared that bar. I’d also say it’s an excellent book for non-poetry readers in that the poems, despite their possibly intimidating classical foundation, are absolutely accessible and, in their rhyme and structure, perhaps a more familiar form. An excellent choice for people looking to dip perhaps hesitantly into poetry or for a gift for your reader friend who “doesn’t do poetry.” Highly recommended.

I thought this collection of poems would make a fantastic starter for those who aren't too sure where to begin. If they wanna dive a little deeper and start to really unravel the feelings behind a person. They were refreshing yet overplayed and I think that held some of the beauty to me. It's easy to expect what's coming but sometimes that's what you need. All in all, I wouldn't read it again but I didn't regret it and the time I spent on it.