I read this is one sitting - beautifully done. I particularly enjoy when a body of work feels so intimate to the author and still deeply emotional for the reader. I've read a lot of great poetry this year that I have learned from, but most didn't quite reach my heart. Find Me as the Creature I am did both.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for the digital arc. All opinions my own.

Find Me as the Creature That I Am by Emily Jungmin Yoon is a powerful collection of poetry. Living between Korea and Hawaii, Emily expresses gratitude to those who influenced her journey. The poems delve into themes of belonging, the complexities of the Asian American experience, and the discrimination endured during the pandemic and the Atlanta mass shooting. They also examine the treatment of animals, humanity, women’s bodies, and the dynamics of family. With nature, ethnicity, and love woven throughout, Emily’s writing evokes a raw and poignant emotional impact. Despite touching on difficult subjects, the collection is deeply satisfying and leaves a lasting impression.
Thank you to Net Galley and Knopf for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Gorgeous! I'm familiar with Yoon's other work and this collection is just as beautiful, I love the ongoing meditation on climate catastrophe and nature threaded in so many other thematic throughlines. The images and individual word choices echo long after finishing.

Thank you to Knopf via NetGalley for providing me a copy of this ARC! Although this is a short book of poems, they are enduring. Emily Jungmin Yoon writes of both everyday mundane experiences and of the extraordinary. She writes what it feels to grieve, to love, to hate and to be hated all so effortlessly and yet so vibrantly. This is the second of her works I have read and have already added the other to my to be read list!

This was an extraordinarily strong book of poems.

Emily Jungmin Yoon has a strong sense of place even when she is being pulled by many places (and even times) at once. These poems all seemed to explore what being in a place meant for not only her (or you or anyone) but the place itself. I know that the main theme of this collection is animal and that runs rampant throughout and is very interesting and compelling but I found the theme of place even more interesting and very relevant and compelling.

In the first poem All My Friends Who Loved Trees are Dead she talks of her grandmother, whom she and her family are at the funeral of and how her grandmother could forecast the weather, a thing you can only be good at when you are preternaturally attuned to the world you are in. She precedes to move on to point out the temporariness of ever being in a place even after one has died talking about how even resting places are contracted.

Another poem I absolutely loved was Litany for the Green. This one centers on her grandfather and his relationship to a sacred place he took the author to when she was young and then proceeded to let her play there.

My very favorites were the last few as she explores love and how it grounds us too, and how we reach to hold it and keep it even beyond our mortal lives.

This was a very strong and enjoyable book for me.

I received an ARC from NetGalley.

this transported me to elsewhere upon pretty words and a soothing rhythm. The epilogue poem alone earns this another star. Very timely and culturally relevant and important

A beautiful and thoughtful collection on the body and its beastly qualities, diving into race, identity, and relationships, both carnal and familial.

What is the body but a pair of hooves or claws to rip through the brushes of life? I could not help but think what it is I am meant to do on this puny planet outside of survival. But Yoon shows us that we are much more beyond survival. We are work. A piece of work.

“We’re working on our lives.”

A beautiful book of poetry. This book dives into life, love, and the complications within it.

Thank you #netgalley for giving me a early read!

I really enjoyed this collection of essays, and found so many to be very personally relevant and moving. This was my first time reading Emily Jungmin Yoon's work and I'm so excited to read more.

5 stars

Emily Jungmin Yoon is a completely new writer to me, but I am looking forward to getting much more familiar with this work. These poems feature a fresh voice, ecocritical insights, and emotional depth. I also found them extremely accessible, which means they meet my most important need for any new (to me) poetry collection: teachable.

I'm really looking forward to teaching some of these to my college students and to reading more from this writer.

I want to give more stars... Truly a great book of poetry, capturing so much about our times, yet resting in the arms of love. And the hope to come back as a “beautiful bird.”

My heart pounds for more or to read the book again. Reading one poem, I felt the tears start as if they were pulling out of me, not welling but tugging and pulling. I know poems and styles appeal to different people but this— this is like a mixture of Ada Limón and Gertrude Stein. I know you may not like Gertrude but she gave us a lot to think about, like Emily Jungmin Yoon has.

The book is by Emily Jungmin Yoon, a Korean poet, translator and scholar who lives in Korea and Hawaii. This is not her first book and acknowledges so many people who influenced and helped her with her writing.

Find Me as the Creature That I Am is a brilliant book of poetry. Just a taste from the poem “We do not have to touch everything we love”:

All I am left with is seriousness.
I am busy with everything. Everyone is busy trying
To laugh. The seal and the turtle are trying
to sleep. The dolphins are trying
to sleep. No there is no “eco-friendly” way to swim with dolphins.
We don’t have to touch everything we love.

There is in this book thoughts and feelings about our current crisis of worry about the future and survival. But there is also much about a love for the world and being in love and the longing for life.
#netgalley

Find Me as the Creature I Am by Emily Jungmin Yoon is the kind of poetry collection that grabs you by the heart and doesn’t let go. Yoon’s writing is a delicate balance of tenderness and ferocity, drawing you into a world where the line between human and animal blurs in the most profound ways. Her poems feel like a dance between love and violence, each word chosen with such care that you can feel the weight of it in your bones. The way she weaves family heritage with meditations on the body and the natural world is nothing short of mesmerizing. Yoon reminds us that we are creatures of instinct, capable of both incredible affection and cruelty, and her exploration of these dualities is as beautiful as it is haunting. If you’re looking for poetry that will make you feel deeply connected to both the wildness and softness within us all, this collection is a must-read. It’s raw, it’s intimate, and it’s utterly unforgettable.

I found Yoon's poetry both disturbing and beautiful. She is so honest in what she writes, not backing away from difficult subjects.. I also enjoyed reading her poetry simply because her style is so different from my own, and that is always educational. I look forward to hearing more from her.

Find Me as the Creature I Am by Emily Jungmin Yoon is a haunting and evocative collection that delves into the complexities of identity, womanhood, and the burdens of history. Yoon’s poetry is both fierce and tender, weaving together personal and collective memories with striking imagery and emotional depth. Each poem feels like a raw, unfiltered glimpse into the poet’s soul, exploring the intersections of culture, trauma, and resilience. This collection is a powerful meditation on what it means to reclaim oneself in a world that often tries to define us.

Thank you to Net Galley and Knopf for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. This book will be published on October 22, 2024. These touching poems ranged from belonging and what does Asian American mean, the prejudice that Asians suffered during the pandemic and the mass shooting in Atlanta, how we treat animals and humans, women's bodies and family. They are beautifully written and I very much appreciated the author's perspective.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishers for providing me with an ARC of this book !

"Find Me as the Creature I Am" is a beautifully woven collection of poems that explores the nature of people, their experiences, their tendencies, and the aftermath of all those things combined. It narrates familiar feelings and experiences that creatures like us encounter such as love, self-discovery, naiveté, hate, discomfort, and so much more.

Emily Jungmin Yoon broke the mere human down to its rawest components--flesh, blood, and bone. She tore those foundations apart and exposed us for the futile, yet surprisingly adaptive and resilient creatures that we truly are.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Beautiful, haunting, autobiographical and real poems that hold the attention of the reader and demand to keep it. Covering the topics of womanhood, identity, race, love and family. The poems are sharp and tender, and they make me want to engage more with the author.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

5 out of 5 stars

Powerful, heartbreaking, enlightening and terrifying, the author examines memory, love, words, race, death, body, self.
My favorites were all of them, but particularly Love and Death Speaking at Once, Elsewhere, and Gala.
Evoking heartache, heartbreak, rage, embarrassment, joy, curiosity, and bewilderment, this is possibly my favorite of the six books I got from NetGalley/Knopf.

"We lit the candles anyway.
We passed the bread. We passed the wine.

If the only world is a hell with my siblings,
I thought, I should feel lucky to call this world home.

Brother,
Sister,

I am here.
I walk with you."

find me as the creature i am by emily jungmin yoon impressed me with title and cover and didn’t stop when i got inside. these poems are sharp and then surprisingly tender. this collection explores themes of family, nature, and body. the imagery is stunning and the message runs deep. i'd recommend these poems to all fans of poetry, and especially those interested in familial relationships and human relationship to nature.

emily jungmin yoon has two previously published collections that i will be tracking down, call me a new fan!

A lovely collection that examines the beast-like qualities in all of us while also examining identity and racism. Some of the poems flowed really nicely with excellent visuals, but there were quite a few references to modern events which indicates to me that they may not age well in the long run. I'm one of those that pop culture references in poetry sometimes draws me out of the flow, however, I think that this is some of the more effective uses for them that I have seen in poetry.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me an eARC for review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.