Maybe the Body: Poems

by Asa Drake

A brilliant debut poetry collection by National Poetry Series finalist Asa Drake that explores the lineage and future lineage of a body shaped by economic, ecological, and political dissonance.

In her stunning debut poetry collection, Maybe the Body, Asa Drake witnesses firsthand the conflicts between art and patriotism, labor and longing. She reaches for the lush landscapes—real and recounted—of the Philippines and the American South as she traces the lineage of a body shaped by economic, ecological, and political dissonance. As one poem reminds us, "it's so hard to write about love without writing about the country we live in." These thirty-eight poems, threaded together with a six-part braided sequence, bind a multigenerational conversation between grandmothers, mothers, and aunts through a range of forms, from pantoums to prose poems. With its vivid imagery and an unforgettable lyrical perspective, Maybe the Body reconsiders the “natural” transactions of work, intimacy, and the poem itself.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published February 24, 2026

About the author

Asa Drake is a Filipina/white poet in Central Florida. She is the author of "Maybe the Body" (Tin House, 2026) and "Beauty Talk" (Noemi Press, 2026), winner of the 2024 Noemi Press Book Award. A National Poetry Series finalist, she is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest, Kenyon Review Residential Writers Workshop, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Storyknife, Sundress Publications, Tin House and Idyllwild Arts. Her poems can be found on The Slowdown Podcast, The American Poetry Review, and Poetry Daily. A former librarian, she currently works as a teaching artist.

Reviews

[MONIQUE · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley for this EARC! This is a beautiful collection of poetry about the body that is explored for all angles including economic and not limited to lineage. The prose in this collection seems to be written in riddles at times but if you take time unraveling them they will provide a warm and understood feeling. One line I particularly liked was from the poem “to someone who’s said I LOVE YOU too many times”

“I understood the risk of it. The sound that alters
My heart. The sound I could not make
For myself. My mother didn’t want me to repeat
Her life. She wanted me to recognize
the possibility of repetition.”

This is a beautiful collection and I encourage people to check it out if poetry and prose is your jam. 💛⭐️💛

[Ashley Hana · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like the bigger picture of this collection, but honestly, most of the time I could barely understand the meaning of a singular sentence. But that could very well be a me problem.

[James O'Bannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

“It’s so hard to write about love without writing about the country we live in”.

Simply buzzing from this one. Considerations on home amidst displacement, what it means to love people in a place that wants us all dead, and what do we do with all the things we carry from them; is its calculable? By the end, the camera faces us all and asks in the most poignant and heartbreaking way imaginable how we reckon with our own survival. Will feel this one for the rest of my days I fear.

[Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It's so hard to write about love without writing about the country we live in."

a beautifully written collection concerned with histories, language, love, & the world we live in (both political and ecological). i really like the narrative sections (one excerpted above) which place the poems in both a time and a space of mind. there is a lot here on the middle-ness of being between cultures & language & more. the poems are very of the moment (like searching your house on Zillow) but with a timelessness as well that i think is hard to pull off.

a good collection to read if you also stay up pondering about your place in the world.

thanks to netgalley for the arc!

[Renee Godding · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Beloved, if I titled this poem
My Mothers America, would it contain her mother? And how long
before you know the urgency of this sentence is lost”

Maybe the Body is a debut poetry collection by Filipino-American author Asa Drake, that centers themes of belonging, nature-vs-nurture and body, alongside undertones of political dissonance and predator-prey-dynamics in our everyday lives.
I was positively surprised with how much this collection resonated with me, as often “prose-poetry” is hit or miss for me. That being said: thematically, this was straight up my alley. I loved the imagery and metaphors the author chose to build this collection on, and really appreciated how her language flowed, despite not adhering to a classical metrum or rhyme.

I personally don’t know enough about the authors background (my ARC didn’t include the acknowledgements or author-biography yet) to say for sure if this was autobiographical in any way. I have to say that - especially in its themes of displacement, familial lineage and cultural heritage – it felt deeply authentic and personal, in a way that made me appreciate the poems even more. Overall I’d highly recommend this collection to anyone, but especially those familiar with the themes of cultural in-between-ness and dissonance that seem more and more relevant every day. Some of these lines will live rent-free in my mind for quite a while.

Some of my personal favourite poems include:
- Yonder
- To someone who’s heard, I love you, too many times (in all its iterations and variations)
- I’m interested in how animals teach us pleasure

As a final note: I think it’s worth crediting the cover-artist for the edition too, as they’ve done a fantastic job of capturing the nature of this collection in a visual. It’s vibrant and provocative, bright pink and sweet-looking on the surface, but has a distinctive feeling of tension and unease with the bunny and the snake (both recurrent motifs in the collection). Perfect example of form matching content here!

Many thanks to Tin House Press through Netgalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve been eager to read more poetry this year so I was excited to read Maybe the Body by Asa Drake and I really enjoyed these poems! I really liked the focus on love and her mixed race Filipina/white experiences. I loved these lines in Afternoon in the Cemetery:
“…The Crow, a
movie in which the star is Asian and white. My mother liked to point out which characters I could grow into.” I’m still loving to see that representation. One of my fave poems is (FR)I(E)NDEX which showcases the author’s love for her friends. I liked how the cover ties into the collection as a rabbit is mentioned. Another of my fave poems is Toyo which plays with language. This is a great debut and I’d love to read more poetry from this author in the future.

Thank you to the publisher via NetGalley for my free review copy!

[June · Rating 5 out of 5]

I so love this poet's observations and use of nature. Proetry (prose poems) that you can dip into like your tongue on the sugary product of honeysuckle flowers. While the middle of the collection did not grip me as much as the beginning and end, I was entirely consumed by Drake's ability to capture the fleeting moments of life in verse. I wish I could quote some of these poems.. but I cannot! So instead I'll offer some keywords: passionflowers pinning you down, feeding the rabbits and being that kind of animal, flowers as shortcuts to desire, gardeners and cultivars, unopened blossoms and unpollinated vines, rhetoric around bombings.

Favorite poems - "Certain Outlines Can Only Be Imagined", "In the Tradition of Women Who've Blessed Me to Transfer These Virtues", & "Yonder"

(4.5) (thank you to NetGalley and Tin House for this e-arc!)

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's something comforting in these words. For a debut, this is really strong and I can't wait to read more of their work. It's very intimate.

Thanks for the ARC

[Tamzen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe the Body is the debut poetry collection of Asa Drake. Through these poems, she hits on themes of identity, ecology, location, and family, but I never felt fully compelled by the work. There was somewhat a lack of cohesion even though the themes were throughout the collection. And perhaps the lack was felt because some of the poems were so metaphorical-leaning that it was very hard to find what the meaning actually was. Pretty words are half the battle, the crux is infusing actual meaning into them. For a bit I thought, maybe I'm just not thinking hard enough about each poem? But after a while and rereading and trying to place some context, I still was coming up short. And though I'm sure I am uninformed on plenty of things in this collection, a poem should still have something a person can latch onto.

For all that criticism, I really enjoyed when Drake brought animals and nature into the mix. For instance, birds are brought up often, and the idea that their lives are transient and they don't fully take up residence or citizenship anywhere is really poignant beside the idea of humanity not being that same way due to border and nationality labels. Drake is biracial Filipina and white, and when she pulls together her identity and concepts like that, it is very interesting!

In conclusion, I liked it fine, but I wanted to like it more. Poetry is one of the even more subjective literatures, and this time, it just didn't hit *as* hard as it could have. This one would still be worth the time to read though!

Thanks to Netgalley and Tin House for the e-ARC!

[Lauren Oertel · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a delight to receive an early copy of this new poetry collection. The cover beckoned me, and the energy of the poems kept me locked in the pages. This book hums and shimmers with the tensions between the past/present/future, the human/animal kingdoms, and the personal/political.

The voice in these poems demands attention, while many of the lines and images linger after reading.

I marked numerous passages throughout these pages. Here are some of my favorites:

“When I feed the animals / the rabbit stands up / so straight she falls over. / That is the part I want / you to know. We are / that kind of animal.”

“Light breaks the window. You don’t recognize light / as a hard hitter. Moonlight moonlighting as a meteorite… My house moonlights / as a more expensive house online.”

“If you rest your hand above your heart, it’s harder to hate your body.”

“Belonging demands being caught in one another’s borders.”

“I don’t want to impress people. I want to survive them.”

Congrats to the author and thank you to Tin House for the advanced copy of this one. I look forward to reading more from Asa Drake!

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am admittedly not an avid reader of poetry. And although I did not fully understand each beautiful and vividly written poem in Asa Drake’s debut collection, Maybe The Body, I did enjoy the challenge of the reading experience. The overall thread of this collection is a portrayal of how the body shows its lifetime of experiences, both lived and inherited. This collection is heavily layered with topical themes of identity, family, immigration, and politics, to name a few. I found the notes at the end of the collection to be particularly helpful in gaining greater insight into each poem. I read this collection on my Kindle, but I would recommend picking up a print copy so that you can page back and forth between each poem and its accompanying notes located at the end of the book. Some of the poems I enjoyed most were Abundance, Maybe The Body Is A Loved One, Afternoon In The Cemetery, Assemble The Mockingbird, and Toyo.

This poignant collection of poetry will be a compelling read for lovers and experienced readers of poetry, especially those who enjoy reading about multigenerational family connections across countries, and how those relationships and the landscapes upon which they have formed, departed from, and traveled to mold the individual.

Thank you NetGalley and Zando Projects for providing me with an ARC of Maybe The Body which gave me the opportunity to voluntarily share my thoughts.

[Caitlin Conlon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really beautifully written debut from Asa Drake. These poems are inventive, inquisitive, and rich with language that forces you to pay attention.

I occasionally thought some poems were a bit abstract, and wouldn’t recommend this to a new poetry reader. But I’d definitely suggest this for seasoned readers of the genre.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love poetry and I enjoyed the insights and perspectives that this collection brought. It felt real and relative to the political climate that we are currently living in while also giving a voice to the feelings and experiences of the author.

[LibrarianPicks · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received an ARC of this incredible collection of poems. Contemporary in its topics and themes. I normally do not read a lot of poetry (tbh I usually need it explained to me) but this book captured my heart. My eyes filled with tears on more than one occasion. Highly recommend.

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

To me poetry invokes something inside of me, when I connect to the words it’s because I feel close to them, I didn’t feel that with this one. I don’t know if it was the writing style or something else but I just wasn’t connecting to the words. It has the ability of feeling real, there’s something there, but it wasn’t there for me. Maybe someone else will connect more with this work.

[pedro · Rating 5 out of 5]

from the poem, “In the Tradition of Women Who’ve Blessed Me to Transfer Their Virtues,”

I give you what I don’t have.
Strawberries in the mouths of birds.

Unopened pomegranate blossoms
devoured by ants. Fruit dropped

from unpollinated vines. Tell me
the last time a flower wasn’t the shortcut

to desire. One year in the middle
of my life I asked, How full do I want to be?

Like hunger in the years before,
I asked fullness to be endless.”

Asa Drake’s poetry book, MAYBE THE BODY is sooo good y’all! 💜

A debut that just gives, gives, and gives. First time I picked it up, I nearly finished it in one sitting! I had to backtrack to underline & tab up my favorites and then proceeded to finish up… only to then get right back to the start, to further highlight even more! loved writing them in my journal too! ✍🏽✨

I loved the “To someone who’s heard I love you too many times” poems — they’re connected not only by title but also in the way that they build on what the last one mentioned. 🌟

I loved the “(Fr)i(e)ndex” towards the end of the book where the poet’s favorite lines from conversations with friends were attributed and given credit 🥰

Some of my favorite lines:

“We are alive in an era of firsts we don’t recognize…”

“love / refracted between us to make everyone in the room more beautiful.” 💓

“Maybe the best omen / for moderation is the thing we love pinning us down.”

“The heart / is a list of demands / I answer one by one.”

“I want to name the part of me / which denotes how long it has been / since I left home.”

“I’d be kinder / if I felt more confident in my own ability to move quickly.”

“I have not learned to convey / anything more than meaning, and I think / when she says I never learned language / she worries I will be lonely.”

“I want to live where most people love me.” 🥺

“Credibility demands I stay in love.”

“I don’t want to impress people, // I want to survive them…”

“Yes, I // feel shame but not regret.” ❣️

[Maddie]

I’m sure it was a me problem, but the vast majority of this was completely intangible to me

[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book oscillated between 1 star and 5 stars for me; at times a little difficult to comprehend and rather confusing and at others completely engrossing and heart wrenching. I’ve settled on 4 in the end because as it turns out I enjoy writing that gives me headaches.

[Ana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written, thought provoking, book of poems.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous book on love, holding, language, the US South, and diasporic inheritances / ruptures. What I love most about Asa's voice in this book is its ability to unapologetically withhold lucidity or direct access with ease, especially in context to the vexed and contradictory terrain of the body and its many histories, its secrets.

[Nuha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Asa Drake's Maybe the Body explores themes of imminent violence, colonialism, conquest, and love. in a way, love is a conquest over the body, an attempt to control or master it. there's tenderness in here too, care and preservation of family history. a timely collection for what we are experiencing in the world.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had the exceptionally good fortune to receive an advance copy of Maybe the Body from Tin House; this is a book I've been anticipating since reading Asa Drake's chapbook One Way to Listen, and I find Drake's continued growth and development as a poet delightful. Maybe the Body is filled with complex, discursive poems that feel dialogic in nature. This is an impressive feat, given the one-sided (or transmissional) reality of the relationship between poet and reader, but such is Drake's deftness with diction that the poems feel welcoming and conversational, even when considering the complicated and difficult realities of intergenerational experience with regime change, immigration, forced estrangement, and distance. Drake never foregoes the humanity of those about whom she writes; there's nothing reductive or sentimental in her portrayal of familial history, and the collection is incredibly rich and resonant because of that commitment. I'm looking forward to repeatedly returning to this collection and deepening my engagement with it. These poems will reward that attention.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not interested in making myself legible or accessible to others. I try to write my poems as clearly as possible for myself. I’m the only person that I have to make comfortable.

Asa Drake in an interview found at
https://www.onlypoems.com/interviews/...

Startling and original, upon first reading I was not always sure I understood these poems, but knew I was being taken on a journey into another’s soul. Identity, heritage, the nature of love and being loved, are explored in the poems. The more I read them, the more they spoke to me.

Yonder by Asa Drake
Light breaks the window. You don’t recognize light
as a hard hitter. Moonlight moonlighting as meteorite,
curtain rod come loose, cabinet collapsed at dawn, a sign
you must go out into the world, received by the reproduction
of gardenias and orange blossoms hungry for visitors.
Love bends the balcony in water weight. Once,
a neighbor cried out for help, collapsed under the collapsed
trellis of passion flowers. Maybe the best omen
for moderation is the thing we love pinning us down.
I check the value of my house on Zillow. My house moonlights
as a more expensive house online. Even the comfort of numbers
scares me. Then there is the comfort that the end of us isn’t the end.

“You must go out into the world,” Drake writes in Yonder, and yet “the thing we love” can collapse and pin us down.

Letter to my Younger Self
by Asa Drake

When I see men digging clay beside the confederate
monument, I want to know if this is where we bury
unspecific history. Make it look easy.

Lately, I worry. Today, I was told
most mixed-race women die in fiction, which implies
that the living version of myself is difficult

for others to imagine. Today a crossing light,
swallowed by the rainy season, joined the number
of things I’ve touched that fall into sinkholes. All space

I didn’t know I was risking. I worry a great deal
about the unimportant ways you busy your hands.
Get thee to a dry cleaner, my love.

Let someone else play human. The woman behind me
can’t stand to look. Who could do that everyday, she says,
like each night I boil moths myself and spin silk.

As a Filipina/white poet she explores her heritage and how she is marginalized by white culture. “I am where I come from,” Drake writes about being mistaken for a waitress while in a restaurant celebrating.

I appreciated the Notes with sources and inspirations for the poems.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

[ash · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks Netgalley for the arc!
This poetry collection was a journey for me. It had its ups and downs, and I was solid on my review about halfway in, only to have my opinions greatly changed in the last 20 pages or so. For the beginning and early middle of the collection, I really wasn’t getting the poems. The writer has an incredible talent for words, so the problem could be on my own comprehension, but I found myself rereading many of the poems more than I usually do, dissecting them, taking notes, even googling terms or references I didn’t follow - and I still didn’t understand what these poems were trying to say. I do love a poem that you have to read again and think about more closely, but some of them I found myself giving up on, having read some beautiful words without really knowing what they were trying to say. Too many overly abstract choices for me, or poems where I thought I was following quite well, only to be thrown off by the last few lines.

That being said, later in the collection this started to change. I really did enjoy a lot of the later poems, my favorite being “Wading Into A River Beneath the Interstate.” From about there on, I was able to connect with these poems, entangle the poet’s meanings, and found myself truly a fan of them. Some of the lines just need a lot of thought, but when it clicks - it clicks. Even in those I didn’t like, you can tell the poet put her heart and soul into these poems, and sometimes things aren’t meant for everyone. Overall, a well done collection, perhaps with a target audience that isn’t me. I am very aware that many of her experiences are ones I don’t share, and poetry is a very personal thing for everyone. I definitely want to revisit this another time.

[Tarredion · Rating 4 out of 5]

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

4.5 stars!

For me this collection was a slow starter (I had to reread the first few poems a couple times until I really got into a rhythm and continued) but the payoff is absolutely worth the trek!

Drake discusses many things, include paramilitary operations, racism, border patrol. Being complicit in the clearing of trees which were someone's shade, a make-shift home, despite thinking of oneself as tolerant and inclusive. Looking for belonging and loving a country which doesn't love you back. The duplicity in wanting to give and to keep. The contradictions of family. This variety really gave the collection depth and complexity.

I thought each poems' scaffolding felt fresh and curious, but Drake also wove everything together beautifully with this singular voice, and this ache for all the different issues which plagues our modern day. I adored the lush but uncomplicated metaphors / similes and descriptions involving fruit and food. It also didn't feel like we just scratched the surface - even with the shorter and simpler poems, Drake really took the plunge and dove deep, both in regards to theme / content and the style.

Would highly recommend both for people who love poems with personal and political commentary, but also those who know nothing, as well as those who long for a new and exciting poetic voice!

The only other note I can make is the fact that I don't really think the cover matches the themes of the collection. Obviously there are snakes, rabbits, etc, but there is more gravity than levity in this one, and the pink tinge and cuteness is just a bit off track, I feel. But that could just be me.

[Sacha · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Drake's debut poetry collection features poems centered on self- exploration within the family, within society, and within isolation.

For me, a favorite element of collections like this is finding my way and identifying a clear, central motif and a sense of who the poet is (from a writerly vs. biographical perspective). It almost feels like jumping in to Double Dutch. Sometimes, you're in after a couple of rotations. Other times, you stand on the side really trying to get that rhythm so that you can be a contributing part of the process instead of the reason it ends. My relationship to this collection was more like the latter scenario. I kept trying to jump in, but I found myself on the outside waiting for a little longer than I'd have liked. Overall, my assessment of why that happened was the constant feeling that I was experiencing referrential material. I loved identifying connections to movements, ideas, and even other poets' works. What I wanted more of is a that personalized sense of who this writer is.

This is a solid debut collection, but it left me feeling like I want to know more about this writer than like I have a clear, emerging vision of that. I'll look forward to more opportunities to find those answers.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Tiffani Ren at Tin House for this widget, which I received in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.

[Ariel Cash · Rating 4 out of 5]

The raw vulnerability of Maybe the Body caught me completely off guard. As someone who can be a bit picky with prose-poetry, I wasn’t sure how this debut by Asa Drake would land, but it ended up being an incredibly resonant read. 🌸🐍

Drake weaves together a tapestry of belonging, the tension between nature and nurture, and the physical body, all while layering in sharper notes of political dissonance. The recurring predator-prey motifs—personified so perfectly by the bunny and the snake on that provocative, neon-pink cover—create a lingering sense of unease beneath a "sweet" surface. 🎀

Even without a traditional meter or rhyme scheme, the language flows with a natural, haunting grace.

While I didn’t have the author’s bio in my ARC, the exploration of cultural heritage and familial lineage felt deeply personal and lived-in.

The metaphors used to describe displacement and "in-between-ness" are striking. Several of these lines are going to be living rent-free in my head for a long time. 🧠✨

This collection feels increasingly relevant in today’s world. I’d highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys poetry that explores the complexities of identity with a sharp, observant edge. 🕯️📖

A huge thank you to Tin House Press and NetGalley for the ARC!

[Vicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and Asa Drake for providing me with an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Asa Drake’s Maybe the Body is a debut poetry collection that meditates on inheritance, identity, and the ways our bodies carry history across generations. Through 38 poems, Drake weaves together imagery from the Philippines and the American South to explore how family, migration, and politics shape the self. The collection often situates personal experiences—conversations with grandmothers, mothers, and aunts—within broader cultural and ecological contexts, reminding us that love, labour, and art are inseparable from the country we live in. Drake’s language is lush and evocative, with striking images that linger, yet the collection sometimes leans too heavily on abstraction, making certain sections feel fragmented or dense. Overall, Maybe the Body is a promising and thoughtful debut that shines in moments of clarity and resonance, earning a solid 3.5 stars for its beauty and ambition, even if it doesn’t always achieve cohesion.

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t read poems very often, but while I was reading through Maybe the Body I felt this urge to look up what type of poems were being written as there was a kind I was unfamiliar with. That was a prose poem. I fell down the rabbit hole after that. It’s been a while since I’ve felt this longing to learn something new.

Art and in this sense, in forms of poems, is fascinating to me because it isn’t direct but yet there were some lines that made me feel sad
“That’s when she, leaving, told me, There’s nothing special about the food you grew up with.”
//
“When two coworkers die suddenly, nothing stops.”
//
One of my favorite poems, or the one that is stuck in my head is I Worry My Mother Will Die and I will Know Nothing

After I had finished, I sat there thinking ‘cause what is this life, or in this case a body, without acknowledgment

Maybe the Body consists of 45 poems pierced together with a six-part braided sequence that blend multi-generational conversations between grandmothers, mothers and aunts in multiple forms from pantoums to prose poems.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this collection of poetry by Asa Drake. Her poems are lyrical and mostly accessible, though sometimes they veered into abstract imagery that was lost on me. I particularly enjoyed her reflections about being a mixed race woman in America. I highlighted and annotated so many lines from this collection, but I'll include a few here that stuck with me for their wit, their imagery, or simply the way the words rolled of my tongue.

"I was obsessed over language / of loss: The houses were not gone but flooded."

"I check the value of my house on Zillow. My house moonlights / as a more expensive house online."

"The earth is an emotional wreck."

"What are words to dancing? Which is said to be / indicative of feeling happy, playful and free. / I can't really argue with that, except / I recall Betty Boop had to dance / when they shot bullets at her feet."

"I don't want to impress people. / I want to survive them."

Thank you to NetGalley and Tin House for my advanced copy.