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

[katy · Rating 4 out of 5]

kinda torn on what to rate this, but i’m going with 4 stars even tho it’s maybe 3.5/3.75 for me really

but i enjoyed this a lot! really well-organized book and the project of it is very interesting (i actually enjoyed reading the introduction and notes at the end which i rarely do)

and here are my annoying pretentious poet thoughts:

i couldn’t always wrap my head around the line break logic here… which i hate to be picky about, but it tripped me up reading so much. there were also SO MANY poems where i thought the ending happened halfway through. and unfortunately, there were a few times i literally rolled my eyes at how cheesy/cliche something was (which i did hate myself for doing right after dw)

still, most of these poems were pretty fantastic

my favs:
- equinox
- postcard (a blur of blossoms)
- postcard (the mountains hazy behind everything)
- my sentimental afternoon
- goatsong
- at this point in time
- tea

[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.

[hafza · Rating 5 out of 5]

i'm always unsure when i start writing a poetry review because truly. i don't think i know enough about poetry/have read enough poetry to communicate my thoughts super coherently. or even have anything to say. and also i'm trying to actually write long & hopefully substantial reviews (dubious on the substantiveness of my words). nevertheless i shall try. after reading deluge last year and thoroughly, completely loving it, i bought leila chatti's follow-up wildness before something sublime and read it twice in three days. it's more experimental when compared to chatti's debut, which i found challenging but also rewarding, especially on my second read which i stretched out across two days.

chatti splits this book into distinct parts. in the first section, "oracle", chatti reinvents/translates/inverts the words and works of a litany of female poets: sylvia plath, anne sexton, louise glück, lucille clifton, and others. she uses their poems as a word bank for her own, or refashions entire poems using a technique she calls the antipode; take an existing poem and switch every word out for its opposite. i freely admit that i am at best passingly familiar with most of the poets she cites, but it's clear that chatti is a diligent student of their work; the changes in style never feel forced or misplaced, but manage to flow effortlessly, drawn together by the force of chatti's vision. my favorite poem of this section was "persephone" after louise glück's "october": There is lucidity / in winter. A necessary violence against the earth. / Loving you was like that. / My heart destroyed. My mind. / To know it could be, and still go on. there's something about how chatti navigates the formal constraints to write poems that are fresh and new and independently inventive for all their intertextuality that i found deeply inspiring.

my other favorite section was "night poems". the conceit of this part, as chatti describes it, is writing that is "Unthinking (not with my daymind, the one of silence), on the threshold of dream. My only intention was to be accountable, to be good. But it wasn’t really writing, I told myself, and whatever had come of it was surely not a poem. Bad! Above each one the date, or else: Night Poem." the night poems do feel like they're searching for some liminal space where all the disparate elements and emotions chatti is un/repressing could cohere. "examination of night" is the most representative of the poems in this section and draws attention to the construction of both poem and book - i would hate to have read this one digitally, for example - by forcing the reader to either tilt their head or the book itself to read the text running around the perimeter of the night photos chatti includes. the photos themselves are so dimly lit that i strained my eyes trying to understand what i was looking at, trying to derive truth from a photo that only barely represents reality. (photography is clearly on my mind. also, wow at the cost of all that black ink.) the brevity of a lot of the poems in this section generates some of the best and most affecting moments, like in "goatsong":

I will survive
the wrong I've done. All the love
that didn't serve me.
My youth used up
worshiping mercurial
myopics. I've cried a lot
very briefly. This sorrow has helped
make my career. Yes,
I'm a difficult person
to endure, I hardly manage.
Oh hum, the rest of my life
keeps coming. It feels just
like I knew it would.

heavy!!! hitter!!! the first few sections really do read like an exorcism, these exercises in form and expression that act like a clearing of a dam. or a katabasis followed by an anabasis. by the time you get to the final part, "shadow/self", chatti's exploration of her self, the i that comes to the forefront, feels like the beginnings of a true springtime rebirth after all the invocations of winter and snow. "someday i'll love leila chatti", after frank o'hara/roger reeves/ocean vuong, opens with the lines, "Take heart—the lilacs are yours / as much as anyone's; you need never / audition for spring." there's a lot of forgiveness in this one, chatti for herself and also maybe for the reader - towards the end, she asks, are you there?", a question for both parties, i think. sometimes you just read a book at the exact perfect moment and i think wildness before something sublime slipped in at the exact perfect moment for me.

so many standout poems, so in addition to the ones i mentioned in my review: "if it must be winter, let it be absolutely winter", "the moment when a feeling enters", "equinox", "the vanished road, the mountain", "night poem" (#1), "angels", "i dreamed i forgot", "on loss", "archaeologist of the disappeared" (!!!!!!!), and of course, the final poem of the collection, which i will reproduce below:

I Went Out to Hear
The sound of quiet. The sky
indigo, steeping
deeper from the top, like tea.
In the absence
of anything else, my own
breathing became obscene.
I heard the beating
of bats’ wings before
the air troubled above
my head, turned to look
and saw them gone.
On the surface of the black
lake, a swan and the moon
stayed perfectly
still. I knew this was
a perfect moment.
Which would only hurt me
to remember and never
live again. My God. How lucky to have lived
a life I would die for.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This unshakable quiet I am told is peace. For you, I count the blessings which stitch me to this earth. Lacework of rime. Pines feathered and faithful as swans. This morning, I woke and pain, a while, stayed dreaming. Children unknowable to me left before my seeing angels in the yard.

Written over a time of grief after losing a pregnancy, these poems are gorgeous and powerful, interweaving sorrow and nature and healing. The poet is Tunisian-American, straddling the intersection in a way that makes these poems read like something from a holy book. Some amazing imagery: branches ready to sprout songs, language blooming to reveal serenity, tattered pieces of us stitched to wholeness, like the cosmos, snow illuminating us and revealing eternity.

REMEMBER GREEN’S YOUR COLOR
after Gwendolyn Brooks

Hours long and hushed as graves
in the barren season. Only night can grow.
A season I listened to no sound,
willing the nothing to speak. Shielded
my green, unyielding hurt. I believed that,
if I relinquished the pain of losing you,
I would truly lose you. But pain is fruitless
and suffering can never be your name.
You were spring. These bare boughs
bloom with song, still of use.

I am wild. I am wild. It is the wildness before something sublime: The violet hour after the earth stills, when the roots Bury their tails, their suffusion. It is so raucous, elsewhere. The shades, the bodies, are black and moving, like infinity. Silence approaches and swells. Its invisible clarity Swells, ink opening to let stillness in. It erases knowledge, languageless.

A weakness is withering within me, a new fragility. I am sutured together like the universe. There is this whiteness, This ewe of whiteness. I unfurl my soles on a sea. The water is thin. It is thin with this idleness. I am untouched. I am stilled out of touch. My ears are relieved by this whiteness. I hear everything.

IF IT MUST BE WINTER, LET IT BE ABSOLUTELY WINTER

Let it be witness. Wolf. Rime bite, brutal tenuity.
Let it be awe. Briefly. Brume—let it twist into sun.
Let it be infinite. Ultimate. Worry, wet, but bless it.
Let snow illume. Renew. Beatify. Trust it. Be bit by.
Beast of it. Bruin. Wren. Ewe. Let it mute. It still.
Nimbus. Let winter obliterate, but sweetly. If it wails,
let it be. Tristful. Numb. Woe-bitten ire. Yet useful.
Interiorly. Sweetbite want. Melt. Bit, bit. Belief.
Wan sun. Let it out. It be wrest. Brittle my I.
Let it blunt me. Wait. (Write it.) Be fruitless.
Ebony tree lit by snow. Mist. Winter. Let it be
beautiful. Wistful. Between its turmoil. (Baby.)
Enter. I let it in, in. To try. Let it be awful,
bittersweet, sublime.

I thought, I thought, and wrote it down. I thought the writing would change something; it changed myself. Which, again, I write. At the edge of sleep, I knock on the night to let me in. To reach into, under, my self. To write the true, forbidden thing I do not know I know. I see only black; I watch it spark. I write what the dark makes audible. A dream speaking what’s inner. Dark as ink in which it is written. Sky of new snow open like eternity.

THE VISIBLE WORLD

Lilac willing to be beautiful.
Wild blackberries, wild lack—
now my tenderness is full of briars.
The light like velvet. It was a time
in the world. The bluey lake dimming,
the rhubarb. You know—that simple.
Despite everything, there is still a
self in me who worships the visible
world and doesn’t take it back.
Egrets. Milkweed. Milk.
I am being here, right now.

[rin · Rating 4 out of 5]

GOATSONG

I will survive the wrong
I’ve done. All the love
that didn’t serve me.
My youth used up
worshipping mercurial
myopics. I’ve cried a lot
very briefly. This sorrow has helped
make my career. Yes,
I’m a difficult person
to endure, I hardly manage.
Oh hum, the rest of my life
keeps coming. It feels just
like I knew it would.

i need to thank leila chatti for writing goatsong because that poem literally got me through 2025 !! there were times when i got lost in the absolute denseness of this collection but there really is just something about the way leila chatti uses language… and i’m so in awe of the formal constraints she uses and it was truly such a pleasure to read the process notes (SO poetics of failure which btw i’m still sad i couldn’t take because of being abroad this sem)

#TheRestOfMyLifeKeepsComing #ItFeelsJustLikeIKnewItWould

[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.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems about dreams and memories, poems inspired by other women poets, and the body, family, and emotional turmoil.

from Persephone: "There was, in you, this coldness. / It turned me cold. My heart, / those days, / like a window left open."

from I Dreamed I Forgot: "I dreamed I forgot / who I was—the last woman / to love you. You knew me / as a girl, when joy was / edgeless, and required / no work."

from I Can't Help Myself: "My body concerns / itself with melodrama and ache, vulgar / wakefulness. Little has changed since / I was first the target of a wrenching / affection."

[Burgi Zenhaeusern · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a book!! And another one to add to her wonderful collections. Wildness Before Something Sublime is multi-voiced in the sense that it honors other poets' work by letting it speak through her poems, which are invariably and characteristically sound-rich and musical and playful. With the sparest of language in places and a veritable firework of sounds and words in others, Chatti unfailingly creates incredible immediacies that strike to the heart each time. She has made of language a wondrous instrument on which to sing herself back to life and us with it.

[Caitlin Conlon · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up. I received an arc of this collection, and even though I have an unread copy of Chatti’s debut I felt compelled to read this one first.

Ultimately, I don’t think I should’ve started with this collection. Though I appreciated the experimental nature of many of these poems, they weren’t quite what I was expecting when compared to the individual poems of hers I’ve read in lit mags.

That being said, I definitely appreciate Chatti’s craft and will continue to read her in the future! This one just didn’t resonate with me as much as I was hoping.

[Dylan Harbison · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say I'm a s*** for intertextuality.

Jokes aside this is one of my favorite books of poetry I've read in a long time and I'm putting it up there with Diane Seuss's Modern Poetry. Inspirational.

[Carly Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely gorgeous--a deeply felt and feeling collection.

[Leif · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely exquisite.

It's true: I am learning to believe
there are beautiful things
never meant for me.

I will read anything by Leila Chatti.

[Adison · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I speak of form, of lineage, how together these led me back to language, which led me back to living… Pain made me turn to poetry, and poetry—the art of new seeing, of infinite possibility—returned me to world.”

Leila Chatti does it again. Her 2020 collection, DELUGE, knocked me flat. I loved it so much that I posted about it to my personal Instagram account (clearly my Bookstagram was four years in the making 😂). It remains one of the best poetry collections I’ve ever read and cemented Chatti as a “must-read” poet for me.

You can imagine, then, how much I anticipated her next collection, WILDNESS BEFORE SOMETHING SUBLIME. It’s equally as impressive, especially since it’s a collection of poems she wrote at a time when she “wasn’t writing.” But I think the essay at the end is the stunner. Chatti is open about her process: writing poems at night in her Notes app, quickly flipping through other works until her attention snagged on something she could write into, taking an existing poem and replacing each word with its opposite (I love this as an exercise and want to try it with my Creative Writing students someday).

This is a longer collection that I’m glad I took my time with. My favorite poems are the ones that appear in the final section—“Tea,” “Someday I’ll Love Leila Chatti,” “I Went Out to Hear”—poems that she says “arrived once [she] learned again, at last, how to move out of [her] mind’s way.” Still, I love the poems she wrote in the process of this relearning for what they represent. In a way, this collection allows the reader to follow Chatti on her journey through writer’s block, through grief. And as a new mom, the image she ends her essay with—the quiet perfection of it—stilled me.

I will echo what I wrote in my post about DELUGE four years ago: Buy this book, and everything that Chatti writes (or doesn’t write, as the case may be).