Wildness Before Something Sublime

by Leila Chatti

In dreams and memories, night poems and a centos, Wildness Before Something Sublime emerges at the edge of language to excavate the body—its desires and griefs.
Leila Chatti’s Wildness Before Something Sublime confronts a world defined by dualities—love and loss, wonder and despair, the gift of “sunflowers / by the roadside” and the pain of losing a pregnancy. “Night Poems,” written on the brink of sleep, travel the dream world and the subconscious mind to unearth the unfiltered self, to understand identity, desire, and the body. Other poems become acts of divination, calling on God and the Muse, calling on the voices of beloved women poets—Lucille Clifton, Anne Sexton, C.D. Wright—to comb through the dark. Chatti expertly grapples with the pain of what a body should but cannot do. Under the shifting weight of this grief, poems fragment, become ruptures of language, experimentations, refractions, a kaleidoscope of recurring sound and image. Snow, light, milk, clouds, silence. Behind every positive image, the shadow of its opposite, an echo of emotion. As Chatti bridges the gap between dream and language, the external and internal, a new world emerges—a world in which darkness is reclaimed.

Genres: Poetry

144 pages, Paperback

Published September 2, 2025

Reviews

[Taylor Franson-Thiel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chatti is one of the most exciting poets writing contemporarily. This book felt so different from previous work, in that the polyvocality and intertextuality allowed Chatti to explore shadow spaces and pull from those spaces immense humanity and honesty. It's as if the shadows were allowed to become both a swallowing and a mirror in reach the reader is reflected back upon themselves and consumed as well.

[Summer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leila Chatti I love you forever! what a beautiful, strange book. once Leila said to me (probably offhandedly for her but it was significant to me!) that she worked best when pursuing a book as a Project. what I like so much about this collection is that it is a collection where the Project is the construction itself. as I was reading I told a friend a lot of the poems feel quite normative on first look, but in the repetition of brevity their strangeness starts to become more evident - there's a craft note in the beginning, and sort of prose-poemy-craft poems? at the end that expound on the Making involved in each section - some of the new forms she devised (ANTIPODE, in which you take an existing poem and rewrite it using each words opposite) or the method/condition in which a section was written (a series of poems written in the notes app on the brink of sleep!). I love how seriously she takes the book as an object, and the clear distress that is at times present when it is evident this book does not resemble Deluge, or even the experiment of figment, or the thematic collaboration of the mothers, and on. I love EXCESS and I love how tiny so many of these poems are while still communicating excess. last section that names suicidality more clearly had me in tears. Leila writes about struggling to get out of bed as I am reading after a week of struggling to get out of bed & I remember all of the poets I turn to when I kinda wanna die, Leila being one. what a special book. I want to spend time with it forever

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leila is one of those poets whose work is always a treasure. I loved the explorations of night and dreams in this book, as well as her confrontation of sorrow and doubt. As always, she is honest, and her words are nothing short of captivating and beautiful.

[Jill Salahub · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found Chatti's work by way of this article on Literary Hub: https://lithub.com/on-not-writing-and... The writing was so gorgeous and raw and heartbreaking, I had to get the book. The book was all of that and more. And it feels like the first book of poetry that is "mine," that I found myself -- every other poet or poetry collection came to me because I knew the author, someone gave it to me, or someone else liked the poet first and shared and that's how I found them. With this collection and this poet, I will be the one sharing, urging people to read it, and giving away copies.