4.5/5

Thanh Dinh’s poetry in The Smallest God Who Ever Lived is honest, emotional, and deeply personal. Three poems stood out to me: I Hold Death in My Arms Like an Old Lover, Reading Virginia Woolf, and Living is About Killing Everything.

Each of them explores heavy themes—death, survival, loneliness, healing—with rawness and care.

In I Hold Death in My Arms Like an Old Lover, death is almost human: someone you speak to, someone you once loved. It’s sad but strangely gentle. It makes you think about all the people we forget, and all the pain that doesn’t make it into history books.

Reading Virginia Woolf is a tribute to how words can save us. It reminded me how reading can make you feel less alone, how it can bring you back to yourself when you feel lost. It’s about finding the will to keep going, even in the middle of quiet sadness.

And Living is About Killing Everything is brutally honest. It talks about how living isn’t always beautiful—it’s hard, tiring, and full of quiet battles inside your own mind. But there’s also a strange hope in it. The poem made me feel seen.

Thanh Dinh’s writing is not about pretending things are okay. It’s about saying the hard things out loud—and somehow, in doing that, making them a little more bearable. This book made me feel, think, and sit quietly with my own emotions. I’m grateful I read it.

I rarely read collections of poems, but something about this one was different, and it resonated with me immediately. Every author's creation in the book is beautifully written and deeply poetic. The themes of mental health, dying, heartbreak, life, and oppression, as well as the author's choice of words, were relatable and cutting from the inside. I wonder how hard it was for the author to release the collection, as it feels very personal. But I am thankful for that. I will just sit here and wait for the author's debut novel.

2.5 stars
I wasn't expecting this to be religious in any capacity, but that's my fault considering the word god is literally in the title...
But other than that putting me off a bit, most of the stories were pretty good! I wish I liked it more tho. I did really love the writing, so that's good I guess.

Sorry if this review is a bit of a mess, my chronic pain is particularly bad today so I can't really concentrate well... So sorry about that!

Thanh Dinh's "The Smallest God Who Ever Lived" is a beautiful work of art. I'm a huge fan of poetry and prose and her musings cover everything from reminisces on recovery through overheard conversations on Death.

Thanh Dinh's words spoke to me so strongly as she tackled a search for love and hope. She speaks with the strength of a soft heart, steeped in experience, and survival.

A beautiful work, and well-worth the read. Thanh's work reads like a late-night conversation with a friend--poignant and authentic.

This collection of poetry is full of emotions. It's sometimes sad, mysterious and intimate, all of which touch your heart. It will resonate with you if you are grieving about loss, breakup or someone's death or when you feel trapped in the human world. Very beautifu.

This collection of poems was amazing! Emotional and lyrical, the writing style was beautiful and capturing, I couldn’t stop reading. There was a perfect mixture of sad and hopeful poems which I’ll surely come back to in the future. The title first caught my attention and I was captured right from the first poem.

The Smallest God Who Ever Lived by Thanh Dinh is a deep, complex, thought provoking book. It really changes my perspective on a few things. This collection of poems provokes deep feelings and longing for our narrator. The lyrical storytelling in this was absolutely beautiful. I don’t read a lot of poetry but this collection was so beautiful and I’m so grateful to have gotten the opportunity to read this. I never felt lost while reading the book, and I could really visualize the story just like any other fiction book, so if you are a beginner in reading poetry, this book would be enjoyable for you! Thank You Thanh Dinh, Writerly Book, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Unfortunately, I found a lot of the poems in this anthology as repetitive. There were also several instances of spelling, grammar, and tense errors. Overall, the poet seemed to ramble a lot and I struggled to keep going.