What do you think?
Rate this book
Set the Bone
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
March 5, 2026
Who needs to rage scream into a pillow when you can read Jillian Stacia instead? 🔥
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
I’m grateful to Jillian Stacia and her publisher, Arcana Poetry, for sending me an advanced reader copy of Set the Bone.
Stacia’s poems are sharp and musical, full of impressive alliteration and imagery. One of my favorite couplets in the collection captures that balance perfectly: “Breathe in butterflies, breathe out beetles.” It’s delicate and unsettling at once, much like the emotional terrain the book travels.
My favorite poem in the collection might be “Hereditary,” which plays beautifully with the idea of legacy and inheritance. She moves through a lineage of women (invoking figures like Marie Antoinette, Sylvia Plath, and Joan of Arc) to explore how women inherit not only history but expectation, silence, and survival. As a fellow poet, I think this one resonated the most with me.
I also loved how certain poems converse with one another across the page. “At My Husband’s Black Tie Event” followed immediately by “Sometimes I Make You the Villain in My Poems” creates a subtle but electric tension.
The imagery returns often to religion, womanhood, covens, and motherhood so some motifs repeat, but they build a mythology that holds the collection together. While a few poems feel tied to the current moment, the evergreen pieces are where the book shines brightest.
As Stacia writes later in the book, “what a wonder, the things women survive.” Set the Bone is a powerful feminist read..one that will resonate especially with women in their mid-thirties and beyond who understand that survival, in itself, can be its own kind of inheritance.
Stacia’s poems are sharp and musical, full of impressive alliteration and imagery. One of my favorite couplets in the collection captures that balance perfectly: “Breathe in butterflies, breathe out beetles.” It’s delicate and unsettling at once, much like the emotional terrain the book travels.
My favorite poem in the collection might be “Hereditary,” which plays beautifully with the idea of legacy and inheritance. She moves through a lineage of women (invoking figures like Marie Antoinette, Sylvia Plath, and Joan of Arc) to explore how women inherit not only history but expectation, silence, and survival. As a fellow poet, I think this one resonated the most with me.
I also loved how certain poems converse with one another across the page. “At My Husband’s Black Tie Event” followed immediately by “Sometimes I Make You the Villain in My Poems” creates a subtle but electric tension.
The imagery returns often to religion, womanhood, covens, and motherhood so some motifs repeat, but they build a mythology that holds the collection together. While a few poems feel tied to the current moment, the evergreen pieces are where the book shines brightest.
As Stacia writes later in the book, “what a wonder, the things women survive.” Set the Bone is a powerful feminist read..one that will resonate especially with women in their mid-thirties and beyond who understand that survival, in itself, can be its own kind of inheritance.
Review of advance copy received from Author
Waiting for the release of female rage the musical? (IYKYK) Jillian Stacia’s collection will sustain you until that album comes out. She wraps your heart in twine and drags you along for the experience of womanhood, motherhood, and love for family. The themes of inherited grief and anxiety that bleed and bloom on bones from generation to generation are braided through poems of resilience and strength. Stacia’s words are utterly divine and to be savored - there is no rushing through this collection. Her poetry needs to soak into your skin and marinate in your bones. In Lanterns, Stacia describes a a character’s “arch of her brow was enough to dry up your wounds, slice the syllables clean to the bone.” In A World full of Olives, Stacia brilliantly weaves peaceful olives into an explosive truth. Her wording beautifully encapsulates the parts of being a woman or mother that are often swept under the rug or closeted away. If you don't close this book feeling utter empathy and admiration for women and mothers, you need to read the book again. Stacia dedicates the book to the women who came before her and the women will come after. He poerty is demands more than “tidy pleasures' and her devotion to speaking the truth of women is memorialized in her words "even my bones beg for freedom', “We dance on shattered heirlooms”, “Let the past dry into dust". Please read this book. You will have zero regrets.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
I don’t read poetry to feel soft. I read it to feel understood. Thank you Arcana Poetry for sending me this collection.
To Set the Bone opens with a poem titled:
“I need a reader who can take a punch”
And that’s exactly what this collection asks of you.
There’s a poem that says, “Do not become gagged by decorum.” And later insists, “We need you angry and all the way alive.” (Nice People Make the Best Nazis) And then you’ll also find lines like, “That the world might fall apart at any second, but the flowers still bloom, so why shouldn’t you?” (As For Me and My House)
That balance is what got me.
This book is furious, yes. It’s political. It’s personal. It’s not interested in being polite. (“scream fuck the patriarchy! at least twice a day” is absolutely the reality we are in.) But it’s also deeply invested in joy. In dancing anyway. In sparkling “bright enough to shatter the sun” (You Can Fight Fascism in a Feather Boa)
There’s another line in that same poem: “Multitudes, babe. Every woman contains them” And that’s what this felt like — a reminder that we’re allowed to be complicated. Angry and hopeful. Grieving and still reaching for something better.
I finished this feeling steadier. Still fired up. But steadier.
If you can take a punch — and you’re willing to stay all the way alive — you’ll want this one. All the stars.
To Set the Bone opens with a poem titled:
“I need a reader who can take a punch”
And that’s exactly what this collection asks of you.
There’s a poem that says, “Do not become gagged by decorum.” And later insists, “We need you angry and all the way alive.” (Nice People Make the Best Nazis) And then you’ll also find lines like, “That the world might fall apart at any second, but the flowers still bloom, so why shouldn’t you?” (As For Me and My House)
That balance is what got me.
This book is furious, yes. It’s political. It’s personal. It’s not interested in being polite. (“scream fuck the patriarchy! at least twice a day” is absolutely the reality we are in.) But it’s also deeply invested in joy. In dancing anyway. In sparkling “bright enough to shatter the sun” (You Can Fight Fascism in a Feather Boa)
There’s another line in that same poem: “Multitudes, babe. Every woman contains them” And that’s what this felt like — a reminder that we’re allowed to be complicated. Angry and hopeful. Grieving and still reaching for something better.
I finished this feeling steadier. Still fired up. But steadier.
If you can take a punch — and you’re willing to stay all the way alive — you’ll want this one. All the stars.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Every piece of this collection, down to the details in the cover art, sets and grows the intentional scene of instability and unapologetic ferocity. Jillian Stacia is unashamedly herself; she gives us everything she’s got within these pages, without giving up any part of who she is. I adored every moment I spent with this collection.
Stacia is not at all quiet about her rightful rage as a woman. Her fire burns through every page, every line, every word – and she wants you, the reader, to feel the wrath of that fire and let it consume you, too. In the first poem of this collection, “I NEED A READER WHO CAN TAKE A PUNCH”, she warns us of this and makes no apologies for the wrath she is about to expose the reader to in the coming pages.
While making my way through this gut-wrenching, relatable collection of poems, I felt myself clinging to Stacia’s underlying, and perhaps even unintentional, notion that every woman knows all too well: hoping to be enough, while simultaneously shimmering from the inside out to everyone who dares to witness her. Stacia’s voice is a gift to every woman who struggles to put into words her righteous, bone-deep grief and rage, while also honoring the women who came before each of us and fought for our right to let loose our feral anguish.
Stacia is not at all quiet about her rightful rage as a woman. Her fire burns through every page, every line, every word – and she wants you, the reader, to feel the wrath of that fire and let it consume you, too. In the first poem of this collection, “I NEED A READER WHO CAN TAKE A PUNCH”, she warns us of this and makes no apologies for the wrath she is about to expose the reader to in the coming pages.
While making my way through this gut-wrenching, relatable collection of poems, I felt myself clinging to Stacia’s underlying, and perhaps even unintentional, notion that every woman knows all too well: hoping to be enough, while simultaneously shimmering from the inside out to everyone who dares to witness her. Stacia’s voice is a gift to every woman who struggles to put into words her righteous, bone-deep grief and rage, while also honoring the women who came before each of us and fought for our right to let loose our feral anguish.
Review of advance copy received from Author
Jillian Stacia’s SET THE BONE is a full-bodied shriek: ferocious, unflinching, and utterly alive. These poems take up womanhood, motherhood (the speaker’s fierce love for her children is especially compelling), marriage, generational trauma, inheritance, mental health, the patriarchy, the brutality of today’s political climate, the body, aging, desire, happiness, and the mundane. The speaker is smart, thick-skinned, reflective, wild, outspoken, and retaliatory, showing how taking the reins of one’s life is a form of self-love. As a whole, this collection reads as a call for retribution, voiced by a speaker you feel yourself inhabiting as she beautifully and brazenly affirms her existence: “There are a thousand women inside me. / And not one of them is breaking.” 10/10 recommend!
Review of advance copy received from Author
“Set the Bone” is an electric poetry collection about the legacy of womanhood (in our history and the way we carry it forward into our futures). Stacia writes poems that are fierce, whimsical, hilarious, powerful and deeply thoughtful and reflective. She also interweaves a heartfelt social conscious through the pages, showing us that the personal is political and the political is personal.
I gasped out loud at so many lines and felt deeply seen by many of the poems in these pages, particularly around themes of motherhood, visibility/invisibility, and self-reclamation in the midst of the tedium of domesticity.
This is a must-read for all women and any man who wants to truly understand what it’s like to be a woman in this day and age.
I gasped out loud at so many lines and felt deeply seen by many of the poems in these pages, particularly around themes of motherhood, visibility/invisibility, and self-reclamation in the midst of the tedium of domesticity.
This is a must-read for all women and any man who wants to truly understand what it’s like to be a woman in this day and age.
Review of advance copy received from Author
I’ve followed Jillian Stacia on Instagram for years, so getting an ARC of SET THE BONE felt like such a treat. I finally held her poetry baby in my hands and boy did she deliver her heart in between the covers!
I’m not usually a poetry person, but this collection completely pulled me in. I had chills more than once, laughed out loud, and found myself feeling deeply seen as a mother, daughter, wife, and just a woman trying to survive life and raise kids in this wild country. It packs a punch, be prepared!
Jillian writes with such raw honesty that it feels less like reading poetry and more like having someone finally say the quiet things out loud. Honestly, reading this felt more therapeutic than a lot of therapy sessions I’ve paid for!!!
I’m not usually a poetry person, but this collection completely pulled me in. I had chills more than once, laughed out loud, and found myself feeling deeply seen as a mother, daughter, wife, and just a woman trying to survive life and raise kids in this wild country. It packs a punch, be prepared!
Jillian writes with such raw honesty that it feels less like reading poetry and more like having someone finally say the quiet things out loud. Honestly, reading this felt more therapeutic than a lot of therapy sessions I’ve paid for!!!
Review of advance copy received from Author
Set the Bone is both a ferocious and wonderfully tender collection of poems on the embodiment of motherhood, female relationships, and matriarchy in a patriarchal world. Stacia’s gift as a poet is to weave between light and dark with a warmth and humour that never diminishes the emotional tenor of the poem. I received an advanced reader copy of this publication but loved it so much I also ordered the physical book because these are poems that beg to be held in your hand.
Review of advance copy received from Author
The kind of poetry I want to read to my daughter one day.
Jillian tells stories that move like memory itself: lyrical, jagged, and yet daringly intimate. With sharp wit and emotional precision, these poems bear witness to womanhood, inheritance, and the difficult work of staying alive. A phenomenal debut.
Jillian tells stories that move like memory itself: lyrical, jagged, and yet daringly intimate. With sharp wit and emotional precision, these poems bear witness to womanhood, inheritance, and the difficult work of staying alive. A phenomenal debut.
March 16, 2026
Set the Bone is a love letter to women and their rage. Rich with emotional moments that explore the effects of generational trauma, the complexities of womanhood, and the coven that guides you, these poems will hold your hand while you scream.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
This poetry collection is for you if you like: strong alliteration and storytelling, religious imagery + cursing, and themes of deconstructing patriarchal curses inherited through matriarchal lines, and the rage that accompanies American motherhood and womanhood.
Review of advance copy received from Author
Looking for a new book to read this spring? Recommend you check out Jillian Stacia's SET THE BONE by Jillian Stacia, a poetry collection exploring contemporary themes of womanhood and motherhood.
Review of advance copy received from Author
A gorgeous collection, an interrogation of feminine rage.
"I am not the storm, but the girl/ who survived it."
"I am not the storm, but the girl/ who survived it."
Review of advance copy received from Author
Wow. Jillian Stacia’s debut poetry book is absolutely sensational. I laughed and cried and raged. Thank you for sharing the world through your lens. We are so lucky for it!
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews