Escaping the Body Poems

" Chloe N. Clark’s poetry collection is a surreal and profound journey through space, forests, monsters, myths, spells, magic tricks, forests, and the body. Escaping the Body is a collection of dreams of the flesh, exploring the cosmic rifts between the soul and the body, encouraging readers to escape their body in search of the liminal space beyond skin and bones." Beautiful, visceral, and haunting. A collection of poems worth reading.

4.5 “In stories from centuries ago, our skin was cursed, befouled by Gods or just because in these stories, we cursed our bodies and the weight of or skin as it changed us, shaped us, made us.” (All Melusine’s Daughters) Chloe N Clark’s Escaping the Body is a haunting collection of poems that entangles myth and science, body and soul. The poems read like dreamlike flashes exploring themes of loss, pain, femininity, life, and death. Clark’s use of motifs relating to myths, the natural world, illusions, and space in many of the poems, especially when talking about femininity and the female experience really resonated with me. Each poem had some aspect that felt relatable to me in some way, even if only vaguely and maybe not even in the way Clark intended. The horror this collection brings comes from the melancholy ache you feel while reading these poems. The poems are lyrically written, but never feel too self-indulgent. Even myself as someone new to reading poetry was able to enjoy the beautiful riddles and metaphors in the writing while still connecting to meaning and being able to take something away from each poem. *** Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review ***

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for honest review. I feel like I'm being generous with a two star rating here, which I'm giving because I know how subjective poetry is. But I ended up tapping out of this book around 70 percent because I just was not finding anything to enjoy. There was not a single poem or even line that stood out to me, that made me pause, that caused my heart to squeeze or flutter. I felt nothing reading this collection. Nothing about it really even felt poetic, more like musings of the author, as if I dipped into her stream of consciousness. The best I can say is if you hate Siken's works for being overly flowery, metaphorical, and confusing, you may like this collection of poems instead.

ARC given by NetGalley for Honest Review Escaping the body is a lyrical and narrative rich collection of poems, Clark takes the reader on journeys into Houdini's escapist illusions, the vast expanse of space, and as far as myths from Ancient Greece. Reading this was like taking a deep dive into the tissue of the body and learning what makes our muscles move. My favorite poems are: "Dissolutions", "Questions for Men Falling Through Space", and "There Is No Matter."