A really interesting collection. Some work more than others, but overall this is solid. The themes are clear and the focus on the varying forms of intimacy keeps the reader engaged across the four sections.

This is an amazing poetry collection., it recounts a lot of lovely varied experiences and a great scope of events. However, it is not a poetry collection written for me. It's not my vibe and I feel It is too intellectual for me. I just don't connect with it. But I will say that it seems perfect for those who wish for a cultured poetry read. I genuinely think the book was good, I just wasn't the right audience for it personally. It was well written and beatiful piece of media so I would definitely recommend this book for someone smarter than me.

These are some gorgeous, rambling poems that are best read on a hazy summer afternoon. I ended up reading this in the space of an afternoon, and it was a gorgeous daze.

3. 5 This poetry collection started and ended really strong! I found myself highlighting and bookmarking in the first and last 15-20%, but the rest I didn't connect with for some reason. I found some lines too cliche or abstract, and others just so grounded in reality with no reflection. My favorites were the end of "Do You Sell Dignity Here," and "In Death, We Met in Scotland." I would still recommend to people looking to branch out in poetry, and I would read more by Fernandes!

"Beauty doesn't need a metaphor."
There is poetry, and then there is art. I Do Everything I'm Told by Megan Fernandes is art.
Poetry is often dripping with elusive meaning, but not here. The prose is beautiful and evocative. The imagery is timeless and important. The pacing is perfect.

I Do Everything I’m Told explores disobedience and worship, longing and possessiveness, and nights of wandering cities. Though there are experiences I do not yet (or may never) understand, I can feel and understand the emotion behind the words. Megan Fernandes has a way of forming conflict into beauty and mundane into eternal.

I haven't read anything else by Megan Fernandes, but now I certainly will be. Pick up this collection if you want to experience art.

**Thank you to NetGalley and Tin House Books for the eARC of this title**

I absolutely adored the poetry in this collection and found so much of it to be extremely touching. Fernandes explores the trials of everyday life and how much of ourselves we "give" to others. More importantly - she explores what we sacrifice when we give too much.

I am giving this 4 stars although my reading experience was closer to a 3.5. The poetry was incredible but the formatting was not up to par. I'm hoping that the actual digital copy of this book does a much better job with formatting but as it was received by me - not great.

Check this collection out if you like moving poetry that makes you think and leaves you wanting even more. I can't wait to check out more from this author in the future!

I LOVED this collection! I was not familiar with Megan Fernandes and her work, but after reading this, I will definitely be digging into her other books. She weaves together such vivid pieces throughout her travels, relationships, and everyday life. The most striking thing about her style is how she pulls together these beautiful narrative elements and then really lands a line that cuts you right to the core. I also noticed and liked how she worked in so many references to Greek mythology themes, as well as space, celestial elements, and rituals. Will certainly recommend to my audience and friends.

Thank you Netgalley and Tin House Books for providing me with an ARC for review.

This collection was INCREDIBLE. I read through it in one sitting & could not stop myself. This book opens on some striking poems and it does not let up. I really enjoyed the sonnets in the middle section. Could not have higher praise for this collection. I cannot wait to recommend this to my friends and to customers.

First, I Do Everything I Am Told is a fabulous title that immediately caught my eye. Second, upon seeing poem titles such as "Get Your Shit Together and Come Home", "Do You Sell Dignity Here?", and "Space Cowboi" I figured I knew the vibe of this poetry collection.

Simultaneously irreverent yet solemn Fernandes tackles the intimacies of being both known and unknown in all the places of life. The varied cities are addressed as matter-of-factly as the author addresses herself. Reading this collection is an exercise in well-navigated metaphor. This collection delivers for poetry fans.

"I Do Everything I'm Told" is what I thought "Sex and the City" was going to be like until I actually watched the show. Funny, worldly, mature, speculative, and the type of cool only women in their thirties know how to achieve.

Fernandes' poetic voice is distinct, witty, and casual. The poems explore love, intimacy, loss, transience, (and what I find the most intriguing) the importance of place. Both literally and figuratively. The speaker travels often, and their lovers and friends become intertwined with or bounded by their respective cities. But even when the speaker seems lost, it feels like there is always a community to return to.

This collection is separated into four sections with varying themes connected by a sense of urgency and longing. Section two is my favorite, with one and three coming in at a tie. Two is the most experimental in terms of poetic form. I loved the imperfect sonnets and their deconstructed counterparts. These poems perfectly encapsulate heartbreak and uncertainty. Section one is reflective; three is introspective. And four moves outward to include world events. (I find most pandemic poems cringy, but these are really good.)

<i>I Do Everything I'm Told</i> is my favorite poetry collection I read so far this year — new or old. And since I adored it so much, I am going to nitpick. The line “while I rehearse K-pop for you” in "Space Cowboi" was distractingly off-tone, and the word “spook” in "Sonnet for the Unbearable" was jarring. Granted, in the context of the poem, it is simply another word for ghost. So no harm, no foul. But it still gave me a moment of pause, and I believe it is worth noting for other Black readers.

To end on a positive note, here are the final lines from one of my favorites titled "Masculinity:"
"But I said none of this. Because when I heard 'no one is coming to save me,'
I held you close like a storied woman. Like all the storybook women before me
who know what destroys and remakes, and what is destroyed in the remaking."

If you like longer poems, sonnets, and poems that are less abstract and follow a more story-like linear pattern, then this poetry collection is for you!

This collection is vibrant, bold, and modern. I enjoyed I DO EVERYTHING I'M TOLD. Felt young and powerful.

Separated into four sections this collection of poems navigates the terrain of queer, normative, and ambiguous intimacies with intelligence and care. Each section focuses either on a theme or type of poem and this is done beautifully. Megan speaks about love, cities, transformations in life and how we react to what's going on in the world and our lives.

The poems are grounded in real cities, a lovely collection of inspiring and vivid poems. I enjoyed how the sonnets each focused on a specific city and evoked the feeling you get with travel and what Megan was feeling/experiencing at that specific moment. She transported you into her life and experience in such a unique way.

Poems I connected with:
Paris Poem without Cliches
Shanghai Sonnet
Rilke
Sonnet for the Unbearable

There is such passion in a short collection, the poems I connected with I really connected with while the others I could take or leave. I know they all worked together to tell the story of the author's life, prose has such a variety that there will be some that will heavily connect and others not so much.

Final Thoughts: If you are just getting into poetry I would not recommend this as a first collection, the poems are great just more difficult for a beginner. Overall, a wonderful collection just more intense topics and techniques in this collection than others.

Disclaimer: Thank you Netgalley and Tin House Books for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I struggled to connect with this one personally but it will still be a collection some modern poetry readers will connect with.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tin House for providing me with an ARC.

Prose poetry is an exceptionally difficult term to pin down, but I think that's where I'd place this collection of poems. Throughout four sections, Fernandes takes us on her wanderings through cities, relationships, and the pandemic itself.

Part of the joy of these poems is their variety. The collection moves from sonnets to couplets to black paragraphs, united by Fernandes's precise and startling language. As someone who's lived in New York for the past several years, I was particularly struck by the poems that dealt with that city in particular, especially its pandemic years. If I had one 'complaint' it would only be that Orpheus and Eurydice are difficult to invoke in new ways, but it is certainly difficult to write love poems without them.

I'm writing this review based on an ARC, so I'm not allowed to quote poems, but I would like to refer to the last poem in the collection as it was presented to me. It's a poem about love poems, about how we might be tired of them but we never actually are, about the many things we write poems about pretending they aren't about love when that's all they're ever about. Its final image is of someone approaching on a red bike in summer. I spent a lot of time with my parents during the pandemic and came back to New York in the summer, and my now-boyfriend, then-friend, came to visit me on a red bicycle. It was so hot that he took a shower the minute he got in, and that red bike sat in my living room the rest of the night. That is what's so magic about poems, I think. Sometimes they see you exactly.

This is a brilliant poetry collection. However, it is not a poetry collection written for me. It is too intelligent for me and recounts lots of experiences that I do not understand. But, that doesn’t make it bad. I could tell just from reading it how much work went into it and how much it is going to mean to someone, even if that someone isn’t me. A fatal flaw many of us have is that we are narcissists. Not every book is written for our enjoyment yet we fault the book for not meeting our expectations. I am trying to shy away from that with this book because as I said, this is one of the most remarkable and well-written modern poetry collections I have ever seen.

Wow, this book of poetry was beautiful, and I'm so happy to have been blessed enough to receive both a physical copy of the book and an e-book option from Tin House Books, Netgalley, and Megan Fernandes. I Do Everything I'm Told is set to hit shelves on June 20, 2023, and I'm so excited for more of my poetry-loving friends to get the chance to experience the profound beauty that this book of poems and prose conveys.