Your Dazzling Death

by Cass Donish, Cassie Donish

In the aftermath of the devastating suicide of the poet's trans partner, these poems recreate their love as a restorative memorial act and an exploration of queer time"suddenly a brilliant red-tailed star / flew across the sky, a sun reversing time,  I crossed one world to another / I stood with her in the other world"Queer writers Cass Donish and Kelly Caldwell were life partners for four years, until Caldwell’s suicide in March 2020. Side by side, they wrote poems and explored their evolving gender identities, navigating Caldwell’s severe bipolar disorder and rejection by a family that didn't accept her as a woman. In Your Dazzling Death, Donish shares with their absent lover and with the reader an ongoing conversation about the self, intimacy, and an experience of love and loss that transcends time.    In this unprecedented collection, Donish elegizes Caldwell and summons the courage to witness their own life, widowed and isolated as a global pandemic began to unfold. With searing honesty and a bravery that refuses to turn away from the traumatic loss, exposing deep humility and vulnerability, they find a fierce new aesthetic for the disorientation and anguish of grief; they recall the joy of Caldwell's becoming, as together they "sounded out” / your new potential names / until we found those syllables ...which tasted, you said, like having / a future". Now that their shared life is forever ended, Donish turns to ritual and natural cycles in order to survive; they find in the words that they once said to Caldwell have a new place on the page. In "Kelly in Violet,” the centerpiece of this collection, the story of Caldwell’s death emerges, partly in conversation with the work of Uruguayan poet Marosa di Giorgio, whose poetry allowed Donish to access the shattering event and appears here in ghostly traces.    Your Dazzling Death memorializes a particular woman, ritualizes the work of grief and love, and subverts linear time, asserting that a future with new love and partnership in it will be informed forever by a monumental love that is still alive in the past.

Genres: Poetry, Queer

128 pages, Hardcover

Published September 3, 2024

Reviews

[Beauregard Francis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I originally decided to read this because I am drawn to narratives that focus on queerness, transness, and grief, and the description touched on all of those factors. I'm a pretty classic dude who doesn't cry at stuff, but within the first few poems I was reduced to tears, which didn't stop for the remainder of the book. Donish has created a truly devastating collection of poetry mourning the suicide of their partner, Kelly. Their use of imagery is exquisite, and every line ached with love and loss. I was especially affected by the presence of Again Street Park in the text, which is a place I had been to before when I lived in Columbia. Very haunting to think that I've unknowingly been at the site of someone's great tragedy and not known it, but I suppose that is true for most anywhere you can go in the world.

Thanks to Knopf for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

[Israel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many of the poems had beautiful imagery and metaphors, really letting me feel the emotions and giving strong messages. The poems about bipolar disorder resonated so strongly with me, having that condition, myself. The poems about gender and grief didn't hit as close to home, but they still punched me in the gut.

There were many poems or chunks of lines that lost me, though. Word combinations didn't make sense and were very disconnected. As the collection progressed, I found this happening more and more often. I'd say this happened with more poems than not.

Thank you NetGalley for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

[Nikki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dealing with the aftermath of their partner’s unexpected death due to suicide, this collection of poetry by Cass Donish had me in tears.

I love reading poetry because so few words can speak so loudly and this collection definitely did. I could feel the heartbreak and grief in these poems.

I rated this collection five stars because the power of words in these poems speaks volumes and I could feel every heartbreak.

Thank you so much to the publisher for an advance copy of this collection via NetGalley!

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This will be among my favorite books of the year. I’ve never experienced such visceral love or throbbing grief in a book. There’s so much beauty in this world, the world that comes after, and then space between.

Love never dies.

[Maleigha Evans]

Rating: N/A

I don't rate poetry books because I feel horrid for doing so,, but if I were to rate this then it would for sure be a 5/5 stars for me. Donish captures grief like no other. They're writing haunts me and dazzles me at the same time. Also!! Bonus points for being a local author,, Como anyone? (I didn't know this when I picked this book up.)

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This brilliant and devastating poetry collection absolutely obliterated me. I set out to read just the first few, knowing I should pace myself given the heavy subject, but I just couldn't stop. Read front to back in one sitting and underlined so many stunning lines, gasped in heartbreak at the rawness and honesty of loss after suicide. The visuals, the sounds of the words, such a masterpiece of writing and grieving.

[F.M Papaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

In their poetry collection, ‘Your Dazzling Death,’ Cass Donish relives, reimagines and recontextualizes the traumatic and tragic loss of their beloved partner Kelly Renee Caldwell. Anaphora is the anchor of this collection and appropriately so, as repetition is a challenging fixture of living with grief.

This poetic device gives permission to the speaker to be held in the relative safety of liminality as they re-experience the loss of their partner throughout the collection from a variety of forms and points of view in the grieving process. It’s a space of visceral vulnerability throughout the text, as we are allowed into a world of loss where the veil between life and death is thin and amorphous.

As painful as much of this subject matter is, this collection also has lightness and humour, woven through its many sensorial moments, taken from memories that center around Kelly's amazing cooking & their shared love for significant places in Nature.

As Donish moves toward their “widowed future,” they are “rebirthing” into themself and finding ways to heal by making space for Kelly in their ‘new life.’ This is done by being surrounded by “things that represent [her]” as well as “perceiving,” “remembering” and “imagining” Kelly often, and in doing so, extending her existence on the side of existence that Donish has accepted that they occupy.

Grief texts will always have a need in our world; with this one, Donish generously models to all writers and artists the courage and strength it both takes and equips one with to process our hardest seasons out-loud. A beautiful elegy & masterful work of poetry.

[Karen W. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection was everything. Tender, raw, tearful, hopeful, a gut punch. Cass Donish invited us into their grief, taking us on their journey as they processed the death of their partner by suicide at the onset of the pandemic. Touching on life, death, gender, mental illness, quarantine, and more, Donish's poetry moved me in ways I never expected.

Sometimes I smiled ("the pandemic was ending soon on our block | we only had to be careful for a few more years").

Sometimes I cried ("I kiss you, my lips pressed flat to glass").

Sometimes I felt my stomach drop away as I rode the roller coaster of emotions ("I sang to her. | I cut a lock of her hair. | I entered her death."

This was a beautiful collection.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Stephanie Silva · Rating 5 out of 5]

mi corazón? destrozao
la belleza y el amor? quizás existen más allá de lo terrenal

[Richard Propes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will admit that once I spied Cass Donish's I initially resisted it. Still, I kept looking back at it and knew that it was a book I needed to read.

As someone whose partner also died by suicide, I am drawn to writers who find a way to go deep into the soul of loss, memory, and the intertwining journeys of what it means to live and love.

Written in the aftermath of their partner's suicide, Cass Donish's "Your Dazzling Death" radiates as
grief ritual, observance of queer place, and deep honoring of nonbinary/trans love.

It's difficult to describe "Your Dazzling Death" without somehow compromising Donish's profound and deeply moving words, equally embracing of light and dark and life and loss and the body's place within the universe. Donish writes with tremendous vulnerability and yet empowerment and resolution, the loss of partner and poet Kelly Caldwell just as the global pandemic was unfolding in 2020. "Your Dazzling Death" is elegy, a conversational lament and claiming of a new reality that attempts to make sense of the senseless. "Kelly in Violet" is a masterpiece grounded within the work of Uruguayan poet Marosa di Giorgio, presented in ways that both linger and fade.

There isn't a poem that feels as if it doesn't belong here. There isn't a poem that feels out of place here. Donish's work feels as if it's free-flowing, non-linear, and yet also present everywhere. Love and grief exist in one tapestry, Donish's journey feeling both stunningly intimate yet also universal. It's a journey that resonated with my own, a now long ago loss different in a myriad of ways yet possessing of common ground and a seemingly universal bridge.

"Your Dazzling Death" is that rare poetry collection that makes me want to immediately immerse myself in an author's writings. It creates a demand that I come to know better this Cass Donish and their literary world. This is a collection that both devastates yet somehow also exhilarates.

As soon as I finished "Your Dazzling Death," I needed to read it again.

[Brice Montgomery · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC!

Conceived as a partner piece to the late Kelly Caldwell’s Letters to Forget, Cass Donish’s Your Dazzling Death is an extended reflection on grief.

If readers choose to read both books (which feels almost necessary), I recommend starting with Letters to Forget because Donish’s collection offers the catharsis that book aches for. The poet dwells in sorrow, but they seem animated by the power of naming it. Where Caldwell’s book is often elusive and bleak, Your Dazzling Death is specific and—surprisingly—hopeful.

Let me explain—

I noted in my review for Letters to Forget that many of those poems wrestle with a world where there is no space for Caldwell, but Donish tenderly creates that space here. That alone feels like an act of hope. These are intensely imagistic and material poems, and they read like an open-armed embrace of Caldwell and all of her pain. They imagine a world with room enough for their love.

I struggle to find a good way to describe the book, but the first word that comes to mind is “symphonic.” The speaker often writes with a euphoric bombast, and it feels like such a conscious response to the self-erasing insularity of Caldwell’s book. These poems are not an elegy—they are a monument.

They are evidence that grief can expand our capacity for love rather than shrink it.

[Jenny Radloff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Diese Gedichtsammlung handelt von dem Verlust der Partnerin durch Suizid, von den Herausforderungen und inneren Kämpfen als trans Person und von nicht endender Liebe. Viele der Gedichte haben mich sehr berührt und den Schmerz der schreibenden Person greifbar dargestellt. Der Stil der Gedichte hat sehr variiert und mir gefiel diese Vielseitigkeit sehr. Dennoch gab es auch viele Gedichte, die mich emotional nicht erreicht haben, ohne dass ich den Grund dafür nennen könnte. Ich kann diese Gedichtsammlung dennoch weiterempfehlen.

In English:

This collection of poems is about the loss of a partner through suicide, about the challenges and inner struggles of being a trans person, and about never-ending love. Many of the poems touched me very much and tangibly portrayed the pain of the person writing them. The style of the poems varied a lot and I really liked this versatility. However, there were also many poems that did not reach me emotionally, without me being able to explain why. I can still recommend this collection of poems.

[Kendra Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a beautiful work of grief.

When we read something as personal as this we tend to bring our personal into it. I had a partner who died because of her addictions and I remember the hole that left in me. I remember the devastation. I remember how it was at once seemed a surprise and an inevitability. So as I read these poems it was impossible not to superimpose my own experience onto Donish’s work.

For me, I felt seen and confirmed in my feelings. Donish works through the beauty and struggle of life with Caldwell: their meeting, and Caldwell’s illness, and how much they loved each other.

Donish never seems to lose sight of the idea that whether they like it or not their life has to go on even though it feels just as if Caldwell took both of their lives at once.

These poems hit me in the stomach with their pain and with their hope.

This is a companion piece to Caldwell’s posthumously published work Letters to Forget.

I received this as an arc from NetGalley and Knopf

[Jessica Burchett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for providing an eARC of this in exchange for an honest review.

5 out of 5 stars

Your Dazzling Death is a collection of poetry by Cass Donish, partner to Kelly Caldwell in the years prior to her suicide.

The titular poem is a wreck, as in it wrecked me and as in I could feel the wreck in Cass that was left by Kelly's absence. The whole of the works are devastating and bleeding loss and grief, still a beautiful tribute to a fierce love. I have lost, and this howling heartache checks in me.

It's the pulsing, throbbing silence in the ears of the ones left behind. Via Negativa (the first one) broke me in its familiarity.

It is a rare poem that can draw tears, but there were a lot in here that had my nose stinging, and more than a couple that actually had me crying.

[Crush Critiques · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow…

Cass Donish has created such a powerful and heartbreaking collection of poetry that somehow manages to be both a mournful remembrance of Kelly Caldwell and a celebration of her life.

Writing about the death of your lover is difficult on its own, but to do so while navigating a global pandemic and lockdown is an entirely different feat, one that Donish does exceptionally well.

This is a heartwrenching collection of visceral grief and endless love. I’m honestly at a loss for words.

5⭐️

I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley and Knopf, however my review is completely unbiased and is my own personal opinion left of my own volition.

[Amy (amysbooked) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written in the aftermath of losing their partner to suicide, this book was such an achingly beautiful take on grief, queerness, love, understanding, and loss. It is such an understatement to say that you could feel how much Cass loved Kelly in every word of these poems. These poems were so clearly written by someone who knew and loved, truly still loves, their partner so much that their grief is weighed down by equal parts understanding and devastation. I'll be thinking about this for a very long time.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was brilliant, beautiful, and extremely hard to read. In these poems, Donish processes the death of their partner by suicide, and I’m at a loss as I try to think of what’s appropriate to write in a review. These poems are art and pain laid bare. They embody the craft of a brilliant poet grappling with unimaginable grief while at the same time holding so much love. They are a testament to how important Kelly Caldwell was to Donish and the world around her, and Your Dazzling Death is a powerful and moving tribute.

Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf for the ARC.

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Your Dazzling Death is a poetry collection that deeply examines grief and its very personal experience left to those who loved and lost someone. It doesn't take the typical approach to the topic, as it shouldn't, because of how grief can be different for everyone. I can't imagine anyone who has lost someone close to them wouldn't be moved by this stunning, unique collection of thoughts and images.

*Book provided by NetGalley

[Sara Habein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, sad, heartfelt, fair. I liked this collection very much, and though some might disagree, I'm glad I read this before I read Letters to Forget: Poems by Kelly Caldwell. These poems provide some outer perspective on the inner turmoil Donish's partner went through.

[Leigh Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Via Negativa

My grief is not a gigantic orb
hallucinating, vibrating, singing,

color of lava, color of a forest,
color of night, of the sun,
of a rainstorm,

of the temperature it was on the day I was born.

It is not the size of a planet.
I don't hold it in my arms hour after hour,

don't

let it singe
my body.

She turned to baking at her most depressed
and now the fall is empty of scent.

My grief isn't intimate,
daily as bread,

hot to the touch,
and burning on the inside,
burning all I've been

I've never been enough
to save someone with only love


---
(not capturing this poem's wonderful use of the page...see the poem as it is in the book page 20)

[Kapiolani · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book of poems had moments that were incredibly profound followed by just as many moments that made me question why they were in the book. I understand that a good chunk of this book was built on grieving but there didn't feel like there was a light at the end of the tunnel or any true joy to be gleamed.

Thanks to NetGalley for the arc.

[karissa✨ · Rating 5 out of 5]

holy shit.

[Jorden · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate the narrative through poetry, and the focus on queerness, trans-identity, loss and love. I enjoyed myself

[Dylan Harbison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could not put this book down and the palimpsest in the middle is particularly amazing

[Carina Stopenski · Rating 5 out of 5]

jesus christ this was one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful things i've ever read

[Mark Folse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dazzling

Grief in love's close embrace, in the hands of a powerful poet. Her stylistic range mirrors the crazy quilt of emotion captured here.

[Melissa Barrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

An impactful read. Intoxicating, astonishing.

[Astoria (Jax) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review Soon.