This is a beautiful poetry collection. I love the theme of becoming more attuned to hidden things, be that external influences or internal feelings, both ours and other people's. Poems such as What I Will Remember and The Stories really spoke to me, about these painful feelings that we try to untangle and turn into positives.

This quote really resonated: "You welcomed, Poetry, my sleepless nights, my labyrinthine dreams, the evening's anguish, the morning sun and each day's newborn hope." I write poetry too and I feel similarly.

I also really enjoyed the poems on relationships, all kinds of relationships. Sometimes I felt like the author was speaking words from my heart, which is something I really love about poetry. When it hits you exactly and you get a connection, it's really special.

This is a collection to take refuge in, to reflect over and to read slowly. I look forward to returning to it and I will look for Lucchetti's other collections. I was only sorry that I have no knowledge of Italian and so couldn't really benefit from the fact that each poem is presented in two versions. If you are lucky enough to be bilingual then I think it would be an even richer experience.

Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for kindly providing me with an advance copy. All opinions are my own.

Blind Corners brings emotional honesty and a questioning mind to the same page. Stefania Lucchetti writes about the roles we carry and the parts of ourselves they can obscure, with a clarity that leaves room for complexity. A beautiful, thoughtful collection to read and return to.

In her introduction to this powerful poetry collection, Stefania Lucchetti writes that she's interested in 'the spaces in between.' This collection shows readers what she means by this. The title is apt because in each poem, I got the sense of a woman turning corners in her life and in so doing, discovering things that were so close and yet unseen until that moment. Of course she had to be ready to go around those blind corners and be open to what she discovered there. So many people prefer to stay where they're comfortable, even if it's painful and this is a part of the poems too. Each one is a journey that explores experiences of love and loss, denial and self-awareness, fear and courage, submission and agency, self-doubt and self-confidence, and more. I got goosebumps several times when reading these poems and I re-read many of them. This is a book that can be read over and over, providing new insights and food for thought on each reading. I loved it.

Also in the introduction, Lucchetti explains that she writes in both Italian and English, but one is not a translation of the other. The words and the poems they create come to her in both languages, almost simultaneously, she writes. I find this fascinating. I have no knowledge of Italian, but I'm sure that for people who are bilingual in that language and English will find even more to engage with when reading this book. This is the first work by this writer that I've read and it won't be the last. I will now seek out more. I highly recommend this poetry collection. Some of these poems will stay with me for a long time and I will be reading it again.

Thank you NetGalley and Antepost for the review copy of Stefania Lucchetti's newest poetry collection "Blind Corners."

I have been a fan of Stefania Lucchetti since I read her collection "Coffee Stains On My Books." This is her third collection that I have read, and so far my favorite. In her introduction, Lucchetti says, "We are made of stories." I feel this is entirely true. Who we are, what we believe, what we learn, all of it is influenced by stories we are told, some true, some make-believe, but all of those stories coalescing into each of us as a person.

Lucchetti reminds us that "What carries humanity forward/ is the human capacity/ to underestimate the effort a project requires/ to forget the pain suffered/ in past disappointments/ to keep moving [...]" She cautions us to recall "How many mistakes are born from the presumption/ of thinking we understand" when we judge people without knowing their stories.

Stefania Lucchetti writes about change, about opening our eyes to see around those blind corners we didn't know were there. She takes readers into the mind of the poet, allowing us to see things not as they always are, but as they could be if we were to understand the breadth of human emotion. She contemplates the various guises she inhabits, "Mother of three children/ professional, poetess, / sometimes even, / an actress;" and ponders how to do it all without losing sight of who she is behind each of these masks. I think many women can relate to this: the mother who writes her novel in the evening after work, after the children are in bed and the dishes washed; the artist that paints only when the children are at school; the scientist balancing research with band practice.

So many of these poems related to my own thoughts and the various paths my life has followed. Stefania Lucchetti is a poet who writes of the life we live, not in allegory or metaphor, but as a person with hopes and sorrows just like our own.