Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

I enjoyed these poems by Charif Shanahan as well my first introduction to his work. Some of the poems are very powerful, rich with strong imagery and explorations of place, religion, familial bonds and the immigrant experience. Loved the themes on language and mother tongues and second tongues.

I must say as time goes on most of the poems fade from my memory, but many were strong on first reading.

This was a fast paced read that I read in one sitting. Ultimately I loved some parts but others felt very confusing for me. A solid performance, however it was missing more from me.

My favorite poetry collection of the year, this one is going to be tough to beat. This collection is full of heart and the writing is incredible. So excited to recommend this to anyone who will listen to me.

I'm having a hard time deciding if I liked this book or not.

The poetry is tender and lyrical. It's themes are ones I enjoy and can connect to. I feel like some poems felt like they could have been edited better or perhaps cut. I liked the prose of part 2 on it's own but it felt strange and clunky in the book as a whole. The poems on race and identity are his strongest.

I think this collection of poetry and prose, while beautiful, just didn't hit all my buttons. That's okay though, because poetry is very subjective and there were still plenty of poems I did like!

My favorite poems are: "Thirty-third year", "Two Rooms Down The Hall", and "Fig Tree."

thank u netgalley for the arc ! <3

i'm trying to get more into poetry this year and i think this was a good collection to start that with. i found so many of these pieces sooo v tender & honest and i rly appreciated so many of shanahans word choices, had to read a few lines over and over. i loved the themes surrounding race, queerness, desire, belonging. sort of reminded me of ocean vuong at times.

def a collection i'd like to own one day!

'race is fiction, naturally. biologically, i mean.
i am trying to say something about interdependence, which i don't believe in.
it implies separateness, which is false. i am trying
to say something about being varied expressions of the very same thing. the very same.'

CW: Suicidal ideation

There’s always so much I want to read, but Charif Shanahan's forthcoming collection felt so vital and arresting that I had to read it for a second time right away. Shanahan’s remarkably cohesive yet multivalent collection explores queer sexuality and relationships, poses messy questions about race and diaspora (often in relation to the speaker’s mother). The poems deal with inversions of language—not only in cleverly threaded poetic language, but also with and against tropes about language as culture.

The centerpiece of the book is its second section, “On the Overnight from Agadir,” an incredible long sequence. It organizes itself around a bus accident in Morocco, Shanahan’s mother’s country of origin, in which he severely injured his neck. A focus on this event opens up a stunning array of questions and assertions about family, belonging, body, and especially about wanting to be alive.

Here and in the rest of the collection, Shanahan writes brilliantly about suicidal ideation, capturing various registers of feeling one’s life is futile while concluding, again and again, that it is necessary to stay alive. The collection is gravely existential without ever becoming nihilistic, a monumental achievement.