[2.5 stars rounded down]

A collection of 21 short poems, Working the Roots is an exploration of black womanhood, growing up, grief, and friendship. It is very short, around thirty pages total, and a nice and comfortable collection to weave in a poem or two a night. Though there are some gems of lines across the poems, most were very underwhelming and had a very first draft or notes app feeling to them.

My favorite was “TWENTIES CHILD”. I felt that the grief present in this poem (made even more explicit by the following five works being named after the stages of grief) came across beautifully. ”this is the child of my twenties//a small hard clump of cells//that multiplied as i divided myself//that grew as i shrank from who i was”, pushes the feeling of grief and longing for what could have been, interrupted by a newly found tumor, forward very well.

Quick taster of some more of my favorite bits:
• ”i thought being unreal would keep me safe//nobody hurts a hologram” (“HOLOGRAMS IN THE BUTTERMILK”) A perfect description of a rationalization of self isolation or hiding yourself from another of my favorites from the collection.
• ”for a while we were just faint strokes of memory//in a frame of white milk//we were there i knew underneath it all//but the pregnant gap between the moment and the memory it becomes is//a particular canal of agony” (“BLACK IS A PLACE WE CARRY”)I love this imagery of a polaroid developing.
• ”my life is just one tight tunnel of anxiety, one big fear of falling into the hole I’ve made for myself that fits just my body and not one ounce more” (“THIS HEAT IS FOR FEELING”) I love those last few words especially. Most writing about anxiety has becomes overdone to me at this point, but I think Bennett’s way of describing it as a sort of self fulfilling prophecy, complete with the imagery of digging your own grave, works wonderfully.
• ”my mother rested enough to give me life//i will rest enough to give you life//and you//and you//and you//and you//and me”(“REST IS THE PART IN THE WATERFALL”) (Side note: I love this title so much) The final lines of the collection end in a beautiful cushion as opposed to a bang. A very good note to leave us on.

Beyond these lines, most of this collection really did not stick out to me. For full disclosure, I am not the target audience of this poetry collection, being a nonblack man. Though I wholeheartedly believe that anyone can read any work regardless of topic, author, or target audience, there are just some things that will come through better to certain audiences over others. I think that this is partially what happened to me with this collection, but I also found some of the poems almost trite or just tired. I’ve read much better poems about many of these topics before and there is nothing new or impressive enough about what the author does with them to warrant much praise.

Alongside this, I personally prefer poems with stronger, more constricting structures. Of the few poems in this collection that are structured in stanzas, they have little rhyme or reason to determine where the blocking is. “DIFFICULT WOMEN ARE LIKE DYNAMITE” is an exception to this, as I greatly enjoyed the rhythm that the structure created. Beside these, the rest are written in paragraph format (usually just one long paragraph). These work better with Bennett’s style and lack of rhyme scheme and allow

A last comment that does not affect my rating but I wanted to include because it bothered me: I wish that the author could have provided a proper description to the story, as every listing for the collection only gives advanced reviews and praise. I’m sure that this is because there are still months until the book releases (at the time of writing this review), but it leaves me missing out on some of the context of the work. But, maybe the author wants readers to go in with no preconceived notions of what they are about to read.

If the mentioned themes or, especially, any of the quotes stick you to you, go for this collection. If not, though, than this is not a necessary collection to pick up by any means.

Though I appreciated the feminist message of this book of poems, I couldn't help but feel that a handful of the pieces were a bit trite.
My favorite line in the whole book was "she isn't a person yet because she is only colors"
My favorite poem is "Difficult Women Are Like Dynamite"