What We Do With God: Poems

by Daniella Toosie-Watson

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

Published September 9, 2025

Reviews

[Zachary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not a big poetry reader, but I got this book and others from Haymarket Books for a friend for Christmas so thought I should read it too.

I had a few favorite poems: All About Bears, I Call On Memory, The Obsession to be Good, On the TV Screen of the Psychosis Center, the Receptionist Plays *Horton Hears A Who!*, Maybe God Can't Dance, ¡Wepa!, and Cedar Waxwing.

There's a great amount of animal imagery in this book. Rewriting the script and relating men to animals often, as men have done to dehumanize women. I loved the bear metaphor and the fish lips metaphor in the first two poems I listed above. I also find this quote in The Obsession to be Good "Animals are a safe intimacy" to be super interesting after reading the rest of this collection and seeing the dangers of animal-hood. How animals are safer than men, even as we describe men as animals because we don't really have a good metaphor to describe the horror and evil of men's actions, the closest thing we can get to is animalism, but then it's removing the man's agency--giving him a way out. As if his actions were instinct instead of dangerous decisions made consciously.

The narrator has good relationships with animals too, like with Horton from Horton Hears a Who! but this animal is unreal, imagined.

As we go into Part 2 of the collection, we run into an unreliability of the narrator of these poems. There are hallucinations, contradictions, dreams of lovers who may or may not be there, hearing Horton, the narrator being tested for psychosis.

We see inner struggle, thoughts of suicide, and those small things like being the best at braiding a niece's hair, might keep us in the moment, keep us here. For those who love us. I found this section about potential psychosis to be so beautiful. The narrator talks about her lineage and culture--how her mother saw the ghost of an old man when an old man had died in her home--and how that imagery has been brought down to her, how that closeness to the mystical and unseen came from her lineage, removing the clinical nature of western medicine, and coming to a more interesting understanding of herself and her perception of reality.

[Tarredion · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to Haymarket Books and Netgalley for this e-ARC. This is an honest review and all opinions in it are my own.

What We Do With God is an equal parts realistic and surrealistic poetry collection. It discusses a dysfunctional childhood, generational trauma, dead parents, religious questioning, sexual assault, psychosis and much much more with great vigour.

I LOVED every single poem, some of them particular favorites, like The Man I Do Not Sleep With, or God Is Dog Spelled Backward. Poems could be both funny and/or emotional, simple and clear to read/understand but also use very strong imagery, surrealism to represent the real, and innovative descriptions. Take you along some twists and turns but never did it lose me. Occasionally heavy and tragic, occasionally floating above the page with an air of bittersweetness.

The style of poetry is of course its own, but does remind me a little bit of my favorites Ada Limón and Mona Arshi. The many creatures, cranes, bugs, suns, sky-mothers, waves and water. Metaphors with surreal and magical implications. The storytelling/throughline which was always tightly strung and tied up nicely at the end of every poem. Imagery which always made sense to me – even when the point was to not make sense, as it was psychosis – and was recurring, at just the right amounts within poems and in the collection as a whole. Familiar, yet not too repetitive.

The feminist, religious themes, complicated families, and its storytelling also invoke Warsan Shire. Culturally relevant and descriptive – both in relation to pop-culture, but also Puerto Rican, Iranian, Russian culture.

The form was greatly utilized. Verses were well-structured and the patterns only broken when it served a purpose. Enjambment easy to follow, well-placed line breaks and punctuation. A certain sense of rhythm that served the story. Tension which just rose and rose and made my heart race every single time. Perfect phrasing honestly.

I connected really strongly with it, as Toosie-Watson was able to build up the emotions really well. Through glimpses of truth, of the voice’s inner world (which was very clearly embodied), through highly-relevant metaphors, particular word choices, magical descriptions, and thoroughly letting us into the room so we could imagine the situation, even when we weren’t told *the whole truth* from the beginning, nor exactly what we should feel (which would’ve been bad form tbh.)

I did tear up, but I did also let out a little chuckle at times, ok!

Without giving too much away, I’ll quote a few bits below:

“And then, you are a man. Where did your scales go? Those little sequins that splayed sunbeams like a fillet blade?”

“My pills keep vigil from my bookshelf. There are so many. I would take them all at once, but my niece is six and I braid her hair best.”

“The sun is a cigarette in the morning’s mouth”

“God is a god of little deaths. I die all the time. Except when God won’t let me. Isn’t it funny?”

“Alive Dad would be pissed if he knew Mom saw his Dead Dad ghost in our living room. Joke’s on you, white, glasses-wearing, Jesus-loving Alive Dad. Dead Dad knows how to take a Joke. Knock, knock. It’s Jesus, back from hell.”

In all this it lays bare a will to live alongside an equally tantalising will to die. (Which I related so much to, with my past, without getting too personal).

I literally have no notes. Well, I have a lot of notes, but no criticisms personally, no faults. This is now one of my favorite poetry collections of all time, and I’ll wait (not so patiently) for the release date so I can get a physical copy and underline the hell out of it!!

[Nichole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the ARC.

I always love poetry collections that Haymarket releases. I find them insightful and creative in ways I don't get from a lot of other publishers that focus on poetry and this collection is no exception. Daniella Toosie-Watson plays with language in graphic and uncomfortably honest ways while playing with themes that include faith and sexual violence.

I was interested in this collection at first because it talks of weaving experiences with our interconnectedness to nature. I wouldn't say this came through in the way I was expecting, but perhaps more so in an even more honest way. The experiences of violence and nature were and are interconnected and Toosie-Watson paints the imagery well.

A line I loved:
"Is it worth it? To be killed by what could easily love you."

[Susan L. L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love all books and all poems in very particular ways, but over the past month I have spent nearly each day with Daniella Toosie-Watson's WHAT WE DO WITH GOD (Haymarket Books), and it has become an all-time favorite. This is a book of trauma, inheritance, memory, shame, psychic turbulence, desire, and, of course, God, tracing the uneasy, and undeniable, intimacy between the divine and the self. It is spiritual, yes, but it is also bold, fearless, down-to-earth, and sensual. At each turn, the speaker is HANDLING God with grace, sass, and aplomb, reshaping, resisting, and holding God accountable as a way to survive a complicated history. In this way, God becomes a framework for self and worldly investigation, an intimate presence the speaker can touch, seduce, argue with, or reimagine through animals, lovers, hallucinations, and painful memories. There is also an exploration of what it means for the speaker to wield a similar god-like power while still feeling wounded, vulnerable, and human. Oh, how I LOVE and HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY RECOMMEND these astonishing poems!

[Anastey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you Netgalley, Haymarket Books, and Daniella Toosie-Watson for sending me this advanced review copy for free. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Unfortunately I could not get into this one at all. It was more like tiny essays.

In one of the first poems we went from writing about an animal being torn apart by dogs, to loved one dying from hitting their head on a radiator, to writing about the first time they bought and used a vibrating device to pleasure herself, all in the same poem. Most of the poems were like this, jumping from one unrelated thought to another, with nothing to join them together. There was no rhyme or reason to it, and the constant undercurrent of violence and death were hard to read. It was a much darker book than I expected.

[Kayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was brilliant! Her ability to explore god/religion, her heritage, mental health and sex were done in an honest way that I admire. The book explores a lot of different themes but if you look beyond the surface they all tie together. I also appreciate that her style of poetry is on the longer side, as I feel like that is becoming a lost art. All in all this work of poetry gets 5 stars from me and will in my collection as one of my favorites. Excited to see what she does next!

[Sasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I deeply appreciate a book of poetry that functions outside of the normal bounds structurally or even tonally. There’s such a beautiful quality of difference and uniqueness in this collection, in the juxtaposition of tones, the interruptions of (what may seem like) non sequitur thoughts, the shifts in perspective all in one poem—across an entire body of work. It’s an impressive style that cannot always be done well nor is it always understood clearly by all.

[Samantha Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Toosie-Watson is masterful at weaving the sacred and profane, not to mention the human and nonhuman. There are so many images and moments that have stayed with me, but here are two of my favorites: the first is the speaker's journey and budding proficiency with a goat-language as they attempt to communicate with a hooved friend; the second is the image of Jesus at discoteca, raising His glass to the speaker as they dance. The word made flesh. Verily I say to you: this collection is a marvel. <3

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of poems has a bit of everything. Are you horny? Are you sad? Are you sad and horny? Are you happy? Are you considering your place in the universe? Are you tired? Are you horny and tired? So many of the poems had clever turns, clever observations, that I enjoyed spending some time with them.

Thanks for the ARC.

[Jorgie BooBoo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I needed to swallow a big wet God. So, I was granted toosie’s transformational poetry. These gotdamn children got me sick with “hand foot and mouth” disease. I was miserable. Could not read for days. I’m feeling much better now after ingesting an elixir of Toosie’s words, hallucinations, and a sleeplessness aphrodisiac of God and body. ❤️

[Seher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read and review this arc.

This was okay. Some pieces were good. I appreciate the concept. I’d read another book by this poet and give them a follow on socials!

[Kate ROGERS · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you Net galley for this eArc!

unfortunately this poetry collection just wasn’t for me. i struggled to follow the meanings of the poems even if i could tell that they had intense feeling behind them.

[Anonymous · Rating 5 out of 5]

Modern gothic.