Thank you to Netgalley and Convergent Books for the eARC. 3.5 stars rounded up.

There were pieces of this collection that I loved, and pieces that I didn't personally connect with, but I enjoyed this collection overall!

Thankfully, many of the pieces in David Gate's debut collection are brand new -- not a repeat of his Instagram feed. Loyal followers will recognize a few favorites, but they will also discover many new faves here. It drags toward the end and there were definitely a number of writings that seemed unnecessary or brash, but I highlighted dozens of lines and will recommend this one!

“ Often I can feel myself inching closer to the lip of despair. Maybe you can too? But I’m not ready to give up just yet. I still want all of this life.
A hummingbird song. Blueberries, raspberries, gooseberries. Michelin stars and Taco Bell. Tattoos on my body where the skin will wrinkle as I age. I still want it all.”

In the last few years, many of us have noticed that something feels off. The hustle to work, to make money, to put food on the table in a world of rising prices. To keep up with the Joneses, to purchase for convenience, to keep buying and consuming to fill a comic. Less time for community, more isolation, more loneliness, even as we crave connection now more than ever. What makes life worth living in the seemingly endless hellscape of capitalism? Where is the joy?

David Gate explores these questions in this poetry collection, many of which I have seen and loved on Instagram already. It’s incredibly difficult to capture all of these experiences, but somehow, he does it. From millennials tired of avocado toast jokes to the desperate desire to reconnect with nature to finding community, the struggles of a competitive modern world are outlined expertly and with great care.

Self-deprecating, irreverent (less panic, more disco made me laugh out loud), and sentimental, this book feels like a moment of relief in a world full of chaos.

I've been a long time fan of David Gate vis Instagram, and I was so excited to read this. It's a thoughtful collection and one that I'll be sharing with friends and revisiting often. Thank you so much to Netgalley for the ARC!

A Rebellion of Care by David Gate is a collection of poems and essays inspired by the life of its author. I found some of the more standout pieces to be incredibly thought-provoking. While I admired the creativity of the remaining selections, they lacked an entertainment factor, and the delivery came off cringey. Not to say that all written work must be "entertaining" or be written to a preset standard, but when something becomes a chore to read, it inevitably becomes less enjoyable.

I have been following David Gate on Instagram for a year or so now and couldn't wait to get my hands on a copy of this. Most of what was here in the book was his IG posts, I enjoyed reading it all together. His essays too hit some great points. Overall, enjoyable, cynical and well written.

A Rebellion of Care quickly became one of my favourite poetry collections. David's poetry is honest, humorous, and incredibly profound. I want to read it again and again.

David Gate begins this inspiring book of poems and commentary narrative saying, “ For the last thirteen years I have lived four thousand miles away from my nearest blood relative who isn’t one of my children. In that time, all our social and communal needs have been met by friends. Every single one..”
Hmmmm….intriguing. Gate is not anti-family but wants us to look beyond our comfort of family to world outside our 4 walls, to strangers who can become new forms of our family. This act can also teach our children to be at home in the world.
Gate explains, “Good families and good homes are not the goal. They are one solid foundation for children to blossom, and they are a playground for us all to learn commitment and forgiveness. But all that love and care isn’t meant to form perfect picture postcards—it is meant to go forth.”

If every single and married person read this book and took its message to heart, it would be a stupendous step forward to ending loneliness and the divisions we see so much of in America at this time.

This is one of the most important books I have read lately about how to live a good life.

I struggled with this book - I almost DNFed but decided to skim through the last third to give a cohesive review. I was unfamiliar with Gate’s work, and while I found that the short essays that started each chapter were (mostly) compelling, the poetry fell short of expressing the ideas he seemed to wish to convey. For one, I felt there were simply too many poems. A lot was thrown in there that seemed like they could be casual instagram post poems, and didn’t need to take up the page space, so that the better poems were better highlighted. I truly think Gate has good intentions, and is politically aware, but some of the poems felt performative when next to other poems about avocado toast and band name puns. I think that Gate does feel inclined to raise awareness about political issues, but the essays felt more compelling to me than the poems themselves, which felt contrived. I think there is a collection of poems in here worth highlighting, but unfortunately it gets lost with the constant thematic jumps between not just chapters, but between the poems themselves.

I enjoyed this collection so much! I’m a new poetry reader, and this might just be my favorite of the year. I am officially a David Gate fan, and will read more of him for sure. Loved Less Panic, More Disco. Adorable and fun. Also loved Give Flowers, beautiful and sentimental. Something for everyone. Loved it!
Thank you netgalley for the advance read!

Although the subject matter really interested me, the simple prose instead of verse really made the text unmemorable

There are times when you feel like you need a certain kind of book.
With all the chaos in the world right now, the news cycle, the division and anger, engaging in content feels both exhausting and important.
This book is a good balm to the way things currently are. There’s the anger and rage at injustice, poverty, violence, inequality, politics, and there’s also a call to return to simple pleasures - connecting with the earth, with each other, with small joy.
It is a book of poetry but I also enjoyed the essay at the start of each section.
I don’t know that I feel exactly the same as David Gate about every single issue, but there is a common humanity here and reading these poems is both thought provoking and challenging, yet soothing and comforting, depending on which one you’re reading.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy of this book.

What a wonderfully, thoughtful collection of poems and prose reminding us what is important in life and to be a rebel against those things that aren't! Each section begins with the author's thoughts and feelings concerning a specific topic and then some poems based upon that topic follow. It would make a lovely gift or a book to keep out to read when you need something quick yet meaningful! It is a short book that packs a punch. For those sensitive readers, there is some sparse occurrences of strong language.

Rebellion of care showcases the values care work has within our society and screams at us to view it differently and more in depth.

The real world examples reenforces Gate’s opinion on this yet his examples often drags his point towards theory. This also leaves parts disjointed and hard to follow.

4.5 rounded up.

I've been following David Gate's work for several years on Instagram. His poetry is sparse and simple while profound. He explores everyday life, justice, home, and care for our fellow humans. I'm a fan. So when Convergent Books reached out with a digital review copy of this, of course I rushed to NetGalley to download it. Thank you!

This book contains much of Gate's poetry that I had already seen online, but I loved that they were collected in one place and divided into themed sections with an essay of introduction on each topic. Gate's words were at times challenging to my worldview, but in a way that was thought-provoking and poignant. If you've been a fan of any of his work before now, I highly recommend this. I'll certainly be getting a print copy for my shelves when it releases.

I received a free review copy of A Rebellion of Care by David Gates from NetGalley. The publishers seemed to think that because I enjoyed poetry collections by other poets with strong social media followers, specifically Joy Sullivan's Instructions for Traveling West and Lyndsey Rush's A Bit Much, I would enjoy this one. Sadly, I really didn't.

In brief, Gates presents a collection of poems divided into almost a dozen chapters. Each chapter is preceded with a long essay that reads more like a blog post. The form varies a bit among the poems. Some are extraordinarily short. Some are nearly a page. He writes about raising a family, spirituality, and cultural concerns. I think in those ways the topic is somewhat similar to Sullivan’s and Rush’s. But there the similarities end.

I struggled with this collection for several reasons. First, there is no real variety in form in terms of stanza length. In fact, most of the poems ignore that aspect of structure. Because the structure doesn't vary at all (few couplets, one or two poems with quatrains, no use of caesura, etc.) it becomes monotonous reading. See "Sorry (Not Sorry)" and "Let Me Give You A Minute". Form could have enhanced a decent poem in this collection. I had to read many of these poems more than once and not in a savoring kind of way. When Gates does use structure, it produces some excellent poems. See "Pallbearing" for example. The variety in the alignment emphasizes the weight of the words. It's a very good poem. "Dependents" is another outstanding poem with real creativity and heartbreak. But those poems feel like exceptions, not examples. There aren't many of them in the collection.

Second, it's clear that there was next to no editing involved in these poems. For example, "Prisms” which has the line "We see each other clearer/And more beautiful than if.' There's no real reason why the grammatical mistakes in those lines couldn't have been corrected. In addition to grammar, a solid edit of the work could have enhanced the poems in terms of content. In "Where the Light is Good" editing could have corrected two lines ending in "us" which don't enhance the musicality of the poem but rather throw a big fork into them. The poems also use too often the "&". So much so that it becomes almost a verbal tick and takes the reader out of the poem. See "Old Layers," "The Font," and "Tell Me Again." I also found the lack of punctuation to be grating. Here or there it does add to the speed and velocity of a poem. But repeatedly avoiding punctuation for 100+ poems is like getting whiplash. See "The Cat Has Gone" and "Love is an Observable Phenomenon."

The titles of the poems are too often internet snappy and don't relate to the content or enhance it. In fact, a lot of the content of this collection feels like pop psychology. So much so that it feels like they've been written more for SEO purposes than for bringing companionship to the reader. See "The Variable" which includes poorly placed line breaks and discusses familial trauma and toxic pain. So too for "On Boundaries."

These were raw poems. Not in the sense of vulnerable or wounding the reader. They were raw in the sense of being unfinished. I kept reading and thinking, that's it? That's all? For example, in "I Told the Peonies About You", which is a strong poem which (again) could have benefited from a few rounds of editing (e.g., removing the last stanza). I think Gates references dashing poems into a Notes ap, which is common among poets as a way to capture good lines and good ideas. This is especially true for poets who are parents. I know many who do this. Maggie Smith has talked about using her Notes ap while stuck in traffic with her kids. And then she edits them. AND THEN SHE EDITS THEM. The poems in this collection remain, or seem to remain, unedited. See "Playing Favorites" and "Who Wears the Pants In Your Relationship."

Another reason I find this collection to be remarkably hard to read as a collection is the second person used in the poems. In Gates' poems, for example, "Michelangelo" he uses the second person as a directive "Being a parent/is the most creative calling on earth/so if you feel/like you have no energy or ideas/for anything else at all/it is because every single day/you are painting/a freakin' Sistine Chapel" (again, no punctuation). This is not a collaborative you. This is instructional, in a pop psychology kind of way. For contrast, Ross Gay's "Thank You" is full of second person references, but his work is collaborative. See the lines "you are the air of the now and gone, that says/all you love will turn to dust,/and will meet you there, do not/raise your fist. Do not raise/your small voice against it. And do not/take cover. Instead, curl your toes/into the grass, watch the cloud/ascending from your lips. Walk/through the garden's dormant splendor." Gates lacks this entirely. I think this is again a publisher issue, in that they should have considered the impact of the poems as a collection.

What I can’t understand is why there are so many poems in this book. The standard book of poetry is about 40 to 100 poems. That usually makes the book run around 100 pages. Sullivan's book was 135. Rush’s admittedly was longer. If a collection only needed to run 100 pages, why include the weaker poems, and so many of them. Why not cut the ones that needed more time to be polished and have a second collection? I truly cannot understand why a publisher who has produced works such as Black Liturgies and Universal Christ has allowed this mishmash to occur. I can only think that they are working on adding poets into their line of authors. The only other poet they seem to be working with is Victoria Hutchins, who is also an internet poet. This may be a miss on the publisher’s part in terms of knowing how to edit poems.

I thoroughly enjoyed these reflections and poems. They were thoughtful - and thought-provoking. I don't align politically or socially with most of Gate's views but the winsomeness of his observations and good writing made this a worthy reading experience.

I found myself stopping. Pausing. Thinking through the idioms and metaphors. Agreeing and shaking my head.

I recommend this for its perspective of influence as life and engagement in things that matter to us. To the prospective poet and essayist in each of us, I say, "Get a copy."

David Gate, noted poet, has published a new set of poems in the book, "A Rebellion of Care." He notes that "the mystery of life is not 'what is this all about?" The real mystery is 'how do we forget?' The beginning and end of it all is that we must take care of each other. Anyone on their deathbed can tell you that and certainly every child feels it too. To say that 'this life is beautiful' or that 'love is the answer' is not in the least bit original, but it is the truth. I believe that truth still hums with possibility. And saying something true in a world awash with lies is the first act of rebellion."

My favorite poems were "Don't Give Up on Yourself" and "Like Every Selfie." I appreciate how moving each poem and essay was, and the ease with which Gate writes. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

With only a few pages in, I knew that I was going to love this book. I just finished and went straight to pre-order the book for my shelf. Highly recommend!

Thank you, NetGalley and Convergent Books for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

these poems are so relevant to everything going on right now
it's hard not to feel connected to the words and the author