I preface this by saying I an not really a fan of dark poetry, or of the pantoum form.
However, I enjoyed this book much more than I thought I would, and recommend it.
The cycling of repeated sentences through the pantoum form creates a kind of meditative quality; each verse is a distinct point of view through the poem. The form itself is simple enough so as not to be too demanding of novice readers of poetry.
I think most people will be engaged by the themes of loss and grief, or at least they will if they have suffered significant losses at some point in their lives.

Numinous StonesPoems by Holly Lyn Walrath.
a haunting collection of poetry about grief and the sacred that digs deep beyond a fairytale world into the grave. 
I did enjoy these poems. So.e were dark. 4*.

First things first: I am reviewing the poetry itself, and the author's two notes. The literary analysis segment was painful even for me, and I was a lit major.

The fact that this book cleaves to one style of poetry (essentially pantoums, but with occasional creative license on the form) is fascinating to me. It makes the book feel dreamy and hazy. There are some definite themes to the poems, but they also work as standalones if you read them individually. The language is stunning. This form is great for talking about death, and reading it is a bit like having OCD where your thoughts cycle on loop even when you don't want them to.

In some cases, the form worked more for me than others. As I said, I'm a lit nerd, so I don't know how accessible people find this form... and look, if you don't like poetry in general, why would I even recommend this collection? If you like thinking about language and how meaning changes depending on context, this is a great chapbook. The author explores themes of grief, chronic illness, and family legacy. If you're into witchy academia, you're the target audience.

A surreal journey down a path of fancy, fear … so many emotions along the way. I am not a huge poetry fan, but I found myself moved beyond expectation at emotions I felt while reading Numinous Stones by Holly Lyn Walrath. Whatever our relationship with life, death, grief and all that goes with it, this is an amazing short read.

I was given this book in exchange for an o way review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Thank you Netgalley for the advance reader copy of Numinous Stones by Holly Lyn Walrath in exchange for an honest review. This was a beautiful book of poetry that deals with grief and loss. Was a good read since the one year anniversary of my mom's death.

Thank you NetGalley and Aqueduct Press for the chance to read and review this book.

I appreciate that Walrath has a certain theme; she repeats the second line from each stanza as the first line of the next. That really does help it feel like a cohesive collection. However, as a whole I wasn't a big fan of the poems as a whole as they didn't resonate with me.

Walrath's newest chapbook is a collection of pantoums about grief and ghosts, monsters and loss, and love and death. While the repetitive form of the pantoum becomes tiring if you read straight through, the organization of poems makes it easy to read a bit here and a bit there and thus appreciate the enormous creativity and work these poems represent. The poems are original and clever and often beautiful, a masterclass in resilience and in release. Highly recommended, especially for poets and poets-becoming.

A short collection of poems of death and grief, with a constant style. A few poems as the book reached the end truly hit hard and I'm still thinking about them.
3.5 stars.

<i>Disclaimer: This collection was provided to me as a review copy by the publisher and poet in exchange for a review. The opinions shared in this review are entirely and honestly my own and not influenced in any way by either publisher or poet.</i>

In this collection of poetry, Holly Lyn Walrath strides forward with short, incisive poems exploring what feels to be deeply personal emotions and observations. Each of the poems contained in <i>Numinous Stones</i> bares something like an open wound, a scar not quite healed or an unformed thought calling out from the void.

It's hard to get a real grasp on all the ideas Walrath wants us to explore with her, especially as each of her poems works on a common refrain that appears repeated in multiple stanzas. The riff from poem to poem, from stanza to stanza, feels like a recombination of ideas around a central theme, with each poem working out a sliver of some deeper emotional context. Some poems seem almost preformed, wholly packaged and polished and ready to be examined like a gemstone. Others come from cruder stuff, the pressure and heat not quite finished working diamond from coal--the effect being like catching a thought-in-progress, its meaning still being worked out by both poet and reader.

I have a difficult time evaluating some of these poems, and perhaps that is my lack of vocabulary for Walrath's craft. There is no doubt that she is able to evoke mood, atmosphere, and emotion in her juxtaposition of repeating ideas. Still, the overall meaning of any singular poem tends to escape me, like the message is just slightly too heavily-coded for me to understand readily. I often find this is both appealing in poetry and disorienting, like I'm not sure of my own feelings until I've had adequate time to grapple with the subject matter.

I come down on the collection somewhere in the middle of delight and confusion, both willing to admit that Walrath is an accomplished poet with a strong arsenal of moods and emotionally evocative vocabulary and that I may not be as emotionally accomplished to follow along in the ideas she aims to capture.

<i>Numinous Stones</i> is a capable collection of spiritual poetry--the kind that tears open a ribcage to expose the spoiled flesh underneath in the hopes it might cleanse the dark spaces we often cover up. Walrath continues to demonstrate her profound ability to write affective literature here, and I continue to value her voice.

Enjoyed this short poetry book from Holly Lyn Walrath. The poems were sad, but very good. Will stick with me for some time. #NuminousStones #NetGalley

Luminous Stones gives us a deep dive into Walrath's mind, and what we find there is gorgeous. Utilizing the unique pantoum style gives this volume its own personality, and the way the author spins this format is a wonder to behold, even as the style does wear out its welcome by the end of the work. The imagery and storytelling within each poem are startling, especially as with the repeated lines she has very few words to tell each of these flash stories, but so many left me with chills up my spine. It's not a work for everyone, but it's a thrill for the right audience.

Numinous Stones is a slim poetry volume about death and grief. Walrath states the desire to “place her life into a metaphor” through a “thin veil of ghosts, monsters, and planets.” She’s an established writer of short fiction and poetry, with her works appearing in major magazines such as Analog and Strange Horizons. She writes in a modern pantoum format, where lines are repeated in patterns. The word “numinous” is defined as “having a strong religious or spiritual quality; indicating or suggesting the presence of a divinity.”

Walrath’s poetry radiates with a depth of melancholy that constantly pushes toward something transcendent. As she grieves her father, she has a vision where “in the dream world he could speak and he was crying out.” This dreamlike collection is encapsulated in that image—like Walrath herself is calling out into a strange and unknown land and trying to speak it into existence.

What initially feels like metaphorical distancing of the self from grief quickly propels into a contemplation of the divine. “I have a sordid affair with death.” The paradox of death is built and hammered into the lines, as if our contemplation of death somehow suggests a kind of immortality. The pantoum format works well, making each work feel at once surreal, emphatic, and timeless. Walrath manages to address the topic of death directly and yet without sinking into any cliche or oversentimentality. She seems to take an unflinching look at death and come away saying, “isn’t it strange and terrifying, and aren’t we beautiful?”

Numinous Stones features a selection of poetry written in a pantoum form of sorts, focusing on topics such as death, grief, and so much more. Holly Lyn Walrath does so in such literary fashion - with mournfully beautiful descriptions and imagery that feels like a dark fairytale. I particularly loved the poem titled "Glowing Fish Swim Under My Skin".

My one negative is a lack of variation in terms of the form of poetry within this collection. Each work follows the same pantoum outline (minus the abab rhyming structure on most of them) - where the second and fourth lines of each quatrain become the first and third of the following quatrain - and it ends up feeling a bit repetitive in the end.

I would certainly read more from Walrath in the future, though, as I loved her narration and imagery.

I enjoyed the dark tone and imagery in Walrath's poetry. However, the nearly identical structure and heavy dependence on repetition of certain lines made things start to feel really redundant about halfway through.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.