The Girl Who Became a Rabbit

by Emilie Menzel

The Girl Who Became a Rabbit, is a book-length lyric, a dark, ruminative poem that pushes the limits of the prose-poetic form to explore how the body carries and shapes grief and what it means to tell a story.

Examining reclaimed narratives of embodiment, gentle hauntings, and fables of the body, Emilie Menzel approaches the body as a home we consciously build, spinning myths and fairytales as ways to rewrite the body’s history. 

In the spirit of Maggie Nelson and Max Porter, Menzel’s writing is wild, lush, recursive, and intentionally messy. A mesmerizing and unique debut, The Girl Who Became a Rabbit intersects fable and trauma, femininity and creatureliness, and imagines the transformation of the body, perhaps, into language.

Genres: Poetry

84 pages, Paperback

Published September 10, 2024

Reviews

[Noah :)]

if roald dahl and lemony snicket teamed up to write surrealist poetry

4.5!

[yunuen]

Read in one sitting - a gorgeous study of the body (as I took from the book)

p. 27/56 "If the act of viewing gains enough density, it becomes a location." I can't quite remember the theory name—a Japanese theory that states the more you view a landscape and create art there, the more real it becomes. I also took the sentiment to connect to Menzel's other sections discussing the more we do the more we learn about our bodies and how they exist (pg. 87 "We learn our bodies when we fall asleep on strangers shoulders...")

pg. 37 "My understanding was that I was simply to react provocatively when played upon. Now my body is fresh like a violin. I want to feel and then be peeled like an orange..." CRAZYYYYYYY RECKONING OF SEXUAL ACTS

pg. 52 "If I ignore my creature she takes to rumpusing the house in agitation. Jumping on tables. Emitting great yowls. It's important to acknowledge your creature. There's no escaping she's yours." gorg. also giggled a little at the many cute implications even if it may not be cute

pg. 66 "Many animals would appear promptly for their nightly naming." I want to sit with the love of my life naming and pointing with some tea on a stoop cmonnn

pg. 69 "Let the mouth stand as a warm temping interior." about childen, reminded me of Krishna and his mother peering into his mouth and seeing the universe

Love it!

[Amber Manning]

Breathtaking. Heartbreaking. The poet writes herself into being and home while unraveling our sense of all three. Loss creeps in to the garden, and so does trauma, but there’s some kind of hope lingering in the midst of it all.

I read the first three pages and put it down for an hour while I picked up my children. Then I devoured the rest in one sitting.

[Jess Dolby]

This will undoubtably be my favorite read in 2024. I am still haunted by this soft, fluffing voice that grows increasingly certain as the sentences unfold; as the scenes reveal their depth in the horizon. I found myself reading the same lines and pages a dozen times before I could move on, gripped by their gentle hands and unyielding quest for body and for truth.

[Donald Armfield]

The Girl Who Became a Rabbit 🐇
The synopsis sets the jump from the start!
Menzel’s narrative, poetic bite is trauma, body transformation with a folksy touch of darkness.

[Hillary]

"How much did we lose in losing one another? How much of the world played out in my head when I wasn't looking, and is that what we call complicity?"

There were certain lines that definitely stayed with me. But at times the metaphors felt a bit stretched, which made some of it harder to fully connect with. Still it’s worth reading for those who enjoy emotional depth even if not every poem fully lands.

"I am trying to rebuild a soft home in soft light, the way a family fills with light breathing and can easily, after dinner, hold together in quiet. To be safely lonely is a feeling I am closer to than to be safely together // but my body is a body and must grieve for emotions, and a body in grieving is sloppy and turning and does not sleep without flaring and I want to know that you, too, are feeling, not as punishment, but as recognition that we were once tethered."

[J]

From the title and the cover I wasn't expecting this to be as BRUTAL as it was, but I am HERE for it

Pros:
- this is my favorite form of body horror which is just realizing that having a body is horrifying
- the dsyphoria and trauma of existing in a feminine body is very much on display here in a cathartic way
- this is absurdist poetry done well; there are lines in here that are excruciatingly poignant of of course I wrote absolutely none of them down

Cons:
- as happens with absurdism, there are points in which the author stretches herself just too far and goes into inanity. It's not often, but it does happen
- there are certain metaphors that are perhaps overused, but it's a collection of poetry, it's not really meant to be read all at once (repetitive elements heavily include violins)
- not a con so much as a warning, there implied SA, abuse, and self harm in here, as well as graphic language. Nothing said plainly as that is not the author's way, but it is more brutal than I was expecting so I'm including that here

Overall:
I was very pleasantly surprised by this. I'm very picky with my poetry and I do very much believe Menzel has earned her accolades. This is haunting and haunted and horrifying and human. I will absolutely be reading this again.

[Nevaeh Galvan]

didn’t finish

[Ailey | Bisexual Bookshelf]

“And a body shouldn’t have to stay as a body does / not want to be. Navigate new skin, find thread against / bone. Let the imagined body be more important than the / real.”

Thank you so much to the author for the gifted eARC! This one is out in the US on September 10th, 2024 from Hub City Press.

The Girl Who Became a Rabbit by Emilie Menzel is an evocative meditation on the unruly, mutable nature of bodies and the ways they refuse to adhere to neat definitions. In this lyric poem, Menzel expertly captures the sensation of being tethered to a body that transforms in unexpected ways, often against one’s will. This is a work that pulses with the tension between the desire to control the body and the reality of its chaotic autonomy.

What struck me most about The Girl Who Became a Rabbit is Menzel’s deft exploration of the body as both a site of transformation and an emotional landscape. The imagery of bodies that fold in on themselves, that spit things out only to swallow them back, creates a visceral sense of discomfort and fascination. The bodies in this poem are in constant flux, a reflection of Menzel’s larger themes about the futility of trying to impose order on the disorderliness of physical existence. It’s a haunting depiction of the ways in which bodies refuse to be static, and Menzel’s language embodies that same fluidity.

Menzel’s lyricism is as fragmented as it is intimate. The poem unfolds in a stream-of-consciousness style that mirrors the non-linear, dreamlike way we experience our own bodies. Her metaphors are dense and abstract, yet they cut to the core of deeply familiar emotions: the desire for home, the yearning to make sense of one's self, and the longing for connection amidst the chaos of embodiment. Menzel's writing blurs the lines between the physical and emotional, weaving vulnerability into the very fabric of her language.

Underlying this poem is a profound meditation on the body as both earth and home. Menzel asks whether the body can serve as a refuge, exploring how our physical forms shape our identities and whether they can offer the solace of stability. Yet, the ever-changing nature of the body in this poem suggests that home, much like identity, is elusive—an idea that feels especially poignant for those of us who struggle to find grounding within our own skin.

This book, while brief, is an immersive, almost otherworldly experience. It reads like a modern-day fairytale—a reimagining of what a body can be, how it can transform, and what it means to live within one. Menzel’s ability to navigate themes of trauma, grief, and alienation through such lush, lyric language is nothing short of brilliant. The Girl Who Became a Rabbit leaves an indelible mark, raising profound questions about the limits and possibilities of the body. I can’t wait to see what Menzel does next.

📖 Recommended For: Readers who enjoy fragmented, poetic prose, those intrigued by the body as a site of transformation, anyone interested in deeply introspective explorations of identity, and fans of Bluets by Maggie Nelson.

🔑 Key Themes: Bodily Autonomy and Chaos, Transformation and Grief, Home and Belonging, Alienation and Connection, Trauma and Healing.

Content / Trigger Warnings: Animal Death (minor), Gore (minor), Blood (minor), Self-Harm (minor).

[Lady Shalott]

(For my personal records only.)

I bought this after seeing Menzel post about this book's release. I remembered that we were connected by Sewanee Young Writers' Conference in 2008 and was really happy to see that the writing momentum had kept going for Menzel. I was more eager to read this work after seeing that it was a prose-poem/lyric--a genre that I don't see given much seriousness or much room for long-form expression.

The work is both alluring and mundane; there is magic to ennui and pain, but it's not a dark or despairing fairytale. The fantastical elements are not always easy to interpret, making me feel a bit adrift, but then I'm still tethered to something realistic in the narrative. I liked that buoyancy. The structure itself reminded me of bursts of automatic writing that I've done on my phone, separating the bursts that may be weeks apart with spaces between. They're not always connected, but themes do reemerge. In this way, I read through this book looking for those repetitions and those connections. Not that I've achieved the same effect on my phone, but there's something accessible about this form because it feels raw and automatic, a bit pre-lingual.

There are so many quotable lines throughout that really make me think about my own journey to self-knowledge and unlearning self-beliefs that have been put upon me by others. I can't say that I fully see the full concrete narrative arc, but that's where I think re-reading is part of enjoying this book. I could see this being a great choice for a book club. Seeing what resonates with others and how they interpret it seems important to examining our collective blind spots to emotional/mythical understanding. Looking forward to revisiting this again soon.

[Barton Smock]

Emilie Menzel’s divinely obsessed 'The Girl Who Became A Rabbit' is a salve of exile, an exodus of fixation, and a delayed devouring. It is never one thing longer than two things allow. It dances with staying, moves history, feels steeped in anew. It has a language for language, and what comes next has to come next. Whether giving otherness a beinghood, or taking bait to its secret unhooking, the verse has a mean proximity to distance that presses the neck for a pulse then wraps the wrist in a melancholy of modification and merge. The book itself is a sincerity machine where form forgives shape but doesn’t die on a shadow. Where body cares for body at the prayer of its reckless idea. No reading, here, is lost. Not in a writing this hungrily unharmed. Not in a poetics so chimerically alone.

[Cadence]

This was the type of poetic work that effectively encourages readers to actually think while reading. Emilie Menzel is a breath of fresh air and creativity as well as pure honesty and vulnerability. She brings artistry into her grief and creates an image of beauty in the pain. While making my way through, I found it clear that Emilie Menzel is more of an Ocean Vuong type of writer than a Rupi Kaur type of writer. When reading the acknowledgements in the back, it was stated that she was mentored by Vuong, explaining the similar styles between the two of them.

Unfortunately, I must admit that I struggled to get "in" to the book, simply because grief is a very heavy topic and I become a very slow reader when things get sad. Despite that, I found her book to be wonderfully involving and I am very glad that I read it.

[Benjamin Niespodziany]

They say don’t judge a book by its cover, but how can you not, when a cover is so damn memorable? Poet and librarian Emilie Menzel’s debut book (look at that cover!) is a book-length prose poem. A sequence of snapshots. A series of fables. Tiny vignettes building into a larger narrative. It’s full of slipstream dreamspeak and surrealist sequences while also feeling grounded in reality and upbringing and childhood mentalities where anything is possible and nothing is what it seems. “The real question is this: when you die, will you have written all the rabbit fables you intended? You must think ambitiously and hope for many rabbit fables.”

[R.]

My wife Yvonne refused to go to a double feature of The Superman and Fantastic Force until I read this, and, yeah, I'm pleased I was held hostage. She knew she was doing what was best for me.

And as part of my venture to read more poetry and books by women, diverse voices and formats in general, this really hit the sweet spot.

Menzel is incredibly talented, attuned to and diligent in describing a brighter and more playful shade of reality - I definitely look forward to their next project!

Sumptuous imagery, almost syrupy, cartoonish in the Millhauserian sense.

Recommend this to you, ha ha and you, but most of all you.

[Courtney LeBlanc]

A book-length prose poem about the body, grief, and survival.

"I am trying to rebuild a soft home in soft light, the way a family fills with light breathing and can easily, after dinner, hold together in quiet. To be safely lonely is a feeling I am closer to than to be safely together."

"Fistfuls of skin, unrobe the hood. You kick at me your own dark eyes. Sometimes it is easiest to stuff my hands in my ears. Sometimes it is easiest to cut off my ears. Sometimes it is easiest to ignore my ears. But here you are—perform. I knew what it is to hold the edge of another's soft cheek, to find another thumb near to mine."

[Dhuha Wasfie]

“but how do you gather language for a concept you do not yet know how to see? you must build a container around a fluid to feel a cage.”

the amount of stars above mean nothing for this prose poetry book because i’m putting the blame on myself and not the author for being lost at parts— this was admittedly challenging and i need to reread but overall lines from this work have stuck themselves onto my body and mind. the jumping rabbit, the violin, the making of the home and becoming of the person, i wish i could have been in a state of better absorption.

[Hunter Smith]

Read this for book club. Loved a lot of parts of this work but wasn’t 100% sure about the whole. Not quite one cohesive story and not quite a collection of separate poems, somewhere in the middle. Will definitely go back to a few parts and would love to reread the entire book sometime. I think I might get more out of it upon rereading.

[Caroline]

3 stars

I will candidly say that I think a lot of this book went over my head, but the reading experience was interesting, almost akin to experiencing a dream. Phrases and motifs recur in a fluid pattern. The animal imagery is obviously a big focus, but there are also throughlines of architecture and physiology. Although I'm not opposed to prose poetry by any means, I think I would have appreciated some differing structures to the sections, like the standalone poem that begins the book.

I want for you a more carved language. I want for you a carving language.

[cecile]

This is one of my favorite poetry collections ever. I resonated a lot thematically with the pieces as someone who’s been chronically ill most of my life. It’s rare to find modern poetry of such high quality. I read it in a book store but I bought a used copy so I can annotate it thoroughly and add it to my personal library.

[Marguerite Sheffer]

I found this book-length poem to be enchanting. In beautiful and haunting images, we begin to see the story of a woman who is reinventing herself after a traumatic event, imagining herself into creatures and fables to regain a sense of herself. I roared through this one!

[Emily Shearer]

Too experimental for me. Great cover art though.

[Savannah Nielson]

I never typically go for poetry books but I wanted something quick and interesting and this was beautiful.

[Anca]

3.3/5☆

"You fear a stranger watching you sleep, but understand this: the stranger is you."

[g]

whatever the fuck this was.. sure what the hell

[Chanel Chapters]

So dense and flowery I couldn’t hear the words and meaning

[Allison]

This was a lovely story of poetry that I was able to get through in one sitting. Beautiful visuals and at times heartbreaking.

[Andi Cantrell]

I have no idea what is going on in this book but some of the lines were nice

[Rhiley Jade]

3.5 stars!

[Patricia N. McLaughlin]

“How much of the world played out in my head when I wasn’t looking, and is that what we call complicity? I built a body like I built a home—to keep the other out” p. 4). It seems that too much of the world has played out in the poet’s mental space in this debut collection, that each of these stanzas ends up building a structure that keeps others out. However, others poets, such as Diana Khoi Ngyun, have expressed an appreciation for Menzel’s images as “both seductive and unflinching, electrifying and terrifying,” which explains why this collection won the New Southern Voices Book Prize.

Favorite Passages:
“Sewn into the age of light, we were required each morning to reinvent reasons for our existence, to justify our own imaging. If you felt a bit peculiar mid-morning, it was likely your own skin” (p. 66).