Tender is the Body

by Alise Versella

"The lives women lead always cost. We pay with our flesh."

Tender is the Body is a raw exploration of womanhood. Alise Versella caresses the supple and delicate, eulogizes the sensual, and stokes the fires of feminine outrage all in equal measure.

Genres: Poetry

54 pages, Paperback

Published July 14, 2023

Reviews

[Line Magnus]

An exploration of womanhood and the female body through poetry, using sensual language and imagery. Some of the images worked very well for me, while others were more of a miss (but that's a matter of personal taste). The language flows and weaves well for the most part, though every now and then, too many metaphors were combined or there was a jarring shift in imagery. On the whole, I enjoyed this collection and would recommend it.

[Sammantha (its_a_literary_life)]

This was a spur of the moment random find on Netgalley that stood out and spoke to me purely from the cover alone!

A short but sweet collection that explores womanhood from a woman’s body to intimacy to sex to love to life from a feminist’s POV in the rawest and most visceral way. I read this twice just for the heck of it. I loved the metaphors and the prose the author used was both beautiful and brutal. A lot of emotion in just a few pages (literally, it’s like 30 pages).

Some of my faves were….

~ The Steam from Underground
Reminds Me of Sex

~ Tender Is the Body

~ Love Harder, Love Still

~ The Procession of the Year

~ Opulent Women, Praise Your
Virtuosity

~ A Spell to Love Again

~ Step Lightly Through This
Grove

~ Produce Aisle

If you’re looking for a very short and sweet but well put together little collection of feminist poetry, pick this up July 14th. It would be a perfect little summer read with the various mentions of fruit and summer.

[Seher]

Thank you NetGalley and Querencia Press for the chance to read the ARC for Tender is the Body.

I'd never heard of Alise Vérsella before this, but I picked up the book because of the cover and title.

While each poem may not be for you, Alice Vérsella has some really interesting and beautiful moments that tug at you long after you're done. My personal favourite was Step Lightly Through This Grove.

[Feefs ˚♡˚]

I had such a amazingly intimate experience reading the poems in this book. Alise has an amazing gift with words and if you are looking for a short quick poetry read that portrays the beauty in womanhood, I definitely recommend.

I would also like to take a moment to thank Netgalley for a copy of this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

[Afrodite 🌷]

*Thank you Netgalley for this advanced eARC, in exchange for an honest review*

The author had a wonderful language and a big vocabulary, which I adored. Some of the poems were really good and made a great impact on me, while others weren’t as good to me. But I really think that’s mostly about people’s different tastes.

I really liked the way the author used metaphors and similes.
It was definitely a good little poetry collection, which I enjoyed overall.

[R.S. S Kendle]

Unapologetically unrestrained and indulgent, Tender Is The Body (published by Querencia Press), the latest collection of poetry by Alise Versella, is a rousing exercise in hedonism.

There’s a beautiful sense of movement within the collection; a whirling hysteria akin to the poetry of the Beat Generation. It’s easy to get swept up in the euphoria, the delicious descriptions of love and female sexuality. Words that drip with desire.

Alise Versella excels at exploring the joy of sensory pleasure. In ‘The Procession Of The Year’ she observes that “You still hold out your tongue to the rain to find out how each month tastes”; a playful reminder to enjoy all that life has to offer, to rejoice in the senses. Yet there is a more animalistic side to this. Within ‘Produce Aisle’ the line between sexual desire and a desire for all sensual delights is blurred. Alise Versella writes “My teeth ache / For all the cool juice of an overripe fruit […] It’s all wanting / To bite into something called sustenance and find pleasure”. The sheer sensual pleasure of eating is transformed into something almost erotic, a pleasure to be savoured. Indeed later in the poem Alise Versella admits that “You watch my face as I eat and there is something sexual in each swallow”.

There’s something delightfully epicurean in the sensual descriptions of food in the collection. Yet in ‘A Woman Learns Small Bites As Politeness’ a darker side to this is revealed. From poignant references to disordered eating; “you begin to fear the weight collecting on your hips and so you starve—just a bit. And the world tells you how pretty you look—so thin!”, to societal expectations of women to be demure and restrained, that “God forbid a woman be seen shovelling sustenance into her mouth, no, instead she slinks home to the corners of her pantry to do so in private.” By rejoicing in food, Alise Versella creates a space for female pleasure, and calls on women to occupy space for themselves and their desires; the perfect antidote to diet culture and problematic relationships with food.

Tender Is The Body is a joyful, ravenous celebration of sensuality in all its forms, a reminder to seek pleasure, succinctly summed up in ‘Tarantata’ in which Alise Versella declares “I abstain from nothing. / Let every pleasure come to me / A life that gets me off”.

[Bea]

Read from July 19th, 2023 to July 29th, 2023. Written on July 29th, 2023.

~1.5~

I will not lie, I had some hopes for this from the small description I read. It seemed like a book I could easily read and enjoy, plus it was poetry which I rather like. But in reality it was a bit all over the place and I only really enjoyed two or three poems. I do feel sad about that though.

I have no idea why I didn't enjoy it, maybe it's just something to do with me. But read it and come to your own conclusions.

Signing off,
B.

(Free ARC from NetGalley and Querencia Press that I chose to review after reading)

[Caroline]

3.5

[ericaajoycee]

3.5