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Chaotic Good
This fresh, dynamic debut poetry book from award-winning poet Isabelle Baafi explores the transformative journey of redefining one's identity following trauma and upheaval. This conversational collection simmers with energy and immediacy as it interrogates how much our identity is determined by the circumstances into which we are born. The book's five sections travel backwards and forwards in asking urgent questions of self-knowledge and change during a marital breakdown, revisiting the formation of a moral compass during childhood, navigating the pitfalls of powerlessness and conformity during adolescence, charting the rise and fall of a passionate marriage, and seeking revitalisation in the wake of divorce. Visceral scenes from childhood and adolescence are set against deeply resonant moments of love blossoming and love dying to explore desire, power, and self-perception in unexpected ways. This exquisite and moving collection marks the emergence of a distinctive poetic voice.
[Sample Poem]
The way you say pen
After Irene P. Mathieu's 'Soil'
it sounds like pain, as in
all I ever wanted was to live by my pain.
If you want to raze a city, all you need
is some paper and a good pain.
You once said that a woman with a pain
is like a gun who soon finds more targets than mercy.
Every day I lost another pain, but you
gave me another to take its place.
A child starts out writing in pencil,
but mastery is rewarded with a pain.
Aged six, first trip without Dad, my legs the
lightning scratched into me with my mother's pain.
My shadow from the day I learned to skip
with bloodied knees – she was my pain pal all this time.
The pain is mightier than the sword,
and twice as likely to punish its owner.
What a luxury and a curse, to live and die
by the torrent of my pain.
Rainclouds surround the registry. Organza-veiled
and blister-footed, I am yours with the flick of a pain.
'Fill out in block capitals with black ink.' Some truths
are only valid when the right pain tells them.
[Sample Poem]
The way you say pen
After Irene P. Mathieu's 'Soil'
it sounds like pain, as in
all I ever wanted was to live by my pain.
If you want to raze a city, all you need
is some paper and a good pain.
You once said that a woman with a pain
is like a gun who soon finds more targets than mercy.
Every day I lost another pain, but you
gave me another to take its place.
A child starts out writing in pencil,
but mastery is rewarded with a pain.
Aged six, first trip without Dad, my legs the
lightning scratched into me with my mother's pain.
My shadow from the day I learned to skip
with bloodied knees – she was my pain pal all this time.
The pain is mightier than the sword,
and twice as likely to punish its owner.
What a luxury and a curse, to live and die
by the torrent of my pain.
Rainclouds surround the registry. Organza-veiled
and blister-footed, I am yours with the flick of a pain.
'Fill out in block capitals with black ink.' Some truths
are only valid when the right pain tells them.
- GenresPoetry
104 pages, Hardcover
Published March 11, 2025
7 people are currently reading
56 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 9, 2025
You know when you read a line of poetry so beautiful it sends shivers up your spine and leaves you a little giddy? That happened to me several times reading this book. The author puts unexpected words to experiences in a way that really gets to the heart of the feelings behind them.
These poems take place during different times in her life, spanning childhood, a tumultuous adolescence and her eventual divorce. I think the poems set during her teen years will particularly resonate with women. She deftly explores the experience of growing up and exploring her own sexuality while simultaneously experiencing unwanted sexualization by others. Some of the poems look back on these experiences with a mature wisdom while others immerse the reader fully in the moment.
But my favourite poems are those at the end of the collection, as we meet the writer in real time and watch her step into her own identity. While the beautiful poems in the beginning and middle of the book are rooted in trauma, the collection ends on a hopeful note.
I definitely recommend this collection to poetry readers and I can’t wait to read more from this writer!
Thank you to the publisher for gifting me a copy of this book.
These poems take place during different times in her life, spanning childhood, a tumultuous adolescence and her eventual divorce. I think the poems set during her teen years will particularly resonate with women. She deftly explores the experience of growing up and exploring her own sexuality while simultaneously experiencing unwanted sexualization by others. Some of the poems look back on these experiences with a mature wisdom while others immerse the reader fully in the moment.
But my favourite poems are those at the end of the collection, as we meet the writer in real time and watch her step into her own identity. While the beautiful poems in the beginning and middle of the book are rooted in trauma, the collection ends on a hopeful note.
I definitely recommend this collection to poetry readers and I can’t wait to read more from this writer!
Thank you to the publisher for gifting me a copy of this book.
March 5, 2025
Isabelle Baafi chronicles the breakdown of her marriage and uncovers the marks of adolescent trauma in this incisive, fresh debut. Baafi plays with chronologies and tests the capacity of poetic form as she interrogates her own past. Through five deeply felt sections that magnify slices of time, she excavates the pieces of memory that make up a life.
January 28, 2025
This is exactly the type of poetry that I’m always looking for and love to read. With themes of love and identity shaped by our life’s experiences, this collection was perfectly personal and intimate. I feel connected to Isabelle Baafi in a way that makes me trust in the takeaways she left me. The poetic technique is outstanding with craftsmanship that begs to be explored for my own personal poetic pursuits. I loved how each poem is rich with vivid imagery and unique concepts. This collection is at the top of my all time list with poems I know I’ll return to time and time again.
April 17, 2025
2.5 just didn’t do much for me
September 6, 2025
"This poem is a lie/waxing true."
As its title might imply, this collection brims with contradiction and nervous energy, demonstrating the range of effects that can be evoked by autobiographical, or at least distinctly personal, poetry. Some are serious commentaries on predatory relationships and gendered social expectations, like "The Bystander Effect", while "The Kuleshov Effect" turns its lens inward to examine how its speaker views themselves. I'm not usually fond of long poems constructed out of short lines, a structure that I feel can often inhibit the rhythm of verse, but "hotboxing" uses three such columns of verse to a page, breathlessly telling a story in a slangy and forceful style that complements the page-filling layout of this piece. Or you might find its complete opposite in "My mother calls", which is so minimalist it could easily have come off as trite, yet somehow lands a thoughtful emotional punch when placed in the context of Baafi's wider examination of identity and memory.
All of this culminates in "Sankofa", a piece which draws on the name-and-age format of online confessionals ("...I go back to save you (21) from yourself..."). It embraces the sense of intimate disclosure that CHAOTIC GOOD deploys to exquisite effect, while also keeping a lighthearted sense of distance, this device calling attention to the performative side inherent in such disclosures, which Baafi meticulously anatomises through poems named for various scientific and technical effects, placing a capstone on the agility and wit that defines this collection.
As its title might imply, this collection brims with contradiction and nervous energy, demonstrating the range of effects that can be evoked by autobiographical, or at least distinctly personal, poetry. Some are serious commentaries on predatory relationships and gendered social expectations, like "The Bystander Effect", while "The Kuleshov Effect" turns its lens inward to examine how its speaker views themselves. I'm not usually fond of long poems constructed out of short lines, a structure that I feel can often inhibit the rhythm of verse, but "hotboxing" uses three such columns of verse to a page, breathlessly telling a story in a slangy and forceful style that complements the page-filling layout of this piece. Or you might find its complete opposite in "My mother calls", which is so minimalist it could easily have come off as trite, yet somehow lands a thoughtful emotional punch when placed in the context of Baafi's wider examination of identity and memory.
All of this culminates in "Sankofa", a piece which draws on the name-and-age format of online confessionals ("...I go back to save you (21) from yourself..."). It embraces the sense of intimate disclosure that CHAOTIC GOOD deploys to exquisite effect, while also keeping a lighthearted sense of distance, this device calling attention to the performative side inherent in such disclosures, which Baafi meticulously anatomises through poems named for various scientific and technical effects, placing a capstone on the agility and wit that defines this collection.
July 15, 2025
for me this was a bit of a mixed bag, the first few sections of the book were great but the latter few weren’t as good for me.
the descriptions are all so vivid and on a line based level some of the poems are beautifully put.
a lot of the poems are powerful and show easy meaning, again more so nearer the start.
(i didn’t read on kindle but gr doesn’t yet list a pb copy with the correct cover option.)
the descriptions are all so vivid and on a line based level some of the poems are beautifully put.
a lot of the poems are powerful and show easy meaning, again more so nearer the start.
(i didn’t read on kindle but gr doesn’t yet list a pb copy with the correct cover option.)
September 28, 2025
I will never have this much control over any language in my entire life and I am in awe that someone could ever be. thoroughly enjoyable.
October 27, 2025
I liked the poems in the final section Rebirth the best.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews