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Abider: Poems
Not yet published
Expected 22 Sep 26Equal parts sad, sexy, and searching, Abider opens with the central lament/brag of its lover-speaker, that she can never truly leave anything―or anyone―behind. The origins of this abidingness are traced in odes and elegies for a rural girlhood beset with jeopardy and scarcity and neglect. But it was also good-wild, conducive to a reckless freedom she can’t help grieving, even as she falls in love at sixteen and marries hard. Meanwhile, other, electric connections are painfully delimited by heteronormative expectations, and her growing dis-ease reveals that she has been trying (and failing) to heal by remaining where she is harmed. She wants―this harrowed, semi-feral girl turned unswerving woman―to stay and go at once, and the tension between her desire for connection and her wish to escape threatens her sense of self and animates these vivid, urgent, tenderhearted poems. Right on time, then, a secret third thing emerges: a final, lush and lucid sonnet sequence that culminates in a promise to abide―first, foremost, always―the self.
98 pages, Paperback
Expected publication September 22, 2026
About the author
Melissa Crowe
12 books2 followersMelissa Crowe is the author of Dear Terror, Dear Splendor; her poems and essays have appeared in journal like Atlanta Review, Crab Orchard Review, Florida Review, and the Shallow Ends. She's co-editor of Beloit Poetry Journal and coordinator of the University of North Carolina's MFA program in creative writing.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
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May 16, 20264 stars; review to come September 2026
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you to NetGalley and University of Pittsburgh Press for providing me with an ARC of Abider in exchange for an honest review.
I do not read poetry very often.
That feels like an important thing to say at the beginning because whenever I read a poetry collection, I always feel slightly out of my depth. I am not someone who can easily discuss meter or form or trace literary lineages with confidence. I am, first and foremost, a reader who responds to feeling. I know when a poem leaves me cold and I know when one manages to slip past all my defenses and settle somewhere uncomfortable and permanent inside me.
Abider did the latter.
Melissa Crowe returns again and again to the idea of staying. Staying in places that hurt. Staying loyal to versions of yourself that no longer fit. Staying attached to people long after love has transformed into something else entirely. The title itself becomes the collection’s beating heart. To abide can be an act of devotion, but it can also be a wound. It can be tenderness, self-erasure, and even survival. I think what makes Abider so compelling is that it understands all of those truths simultaneously.
This is, in many ways, a story of queer self-discovery but I appreciated that Crowe does not present that journey as a neat, triumphant revelation. There is no clean line from confusion to certainty. Instead, the collection feels deeply interested in the messiness of becoming. The speaker moves through rural girlhood, marriage, desire, grief, memory and self-recognition carrying all of her previous selves alongside her. Nothing is discarded or simplified. The child, the wife, the lover, the queer woman, the survivor all remain present, speaking to and through one another.
Crowe consistently resists easy narratives. The past is neither romanticized nor condemned. Love is neither salvation nor destruction. Desire is neither wholly liberating nor wholly painful. Everything exists in contradiction.
As a queer woman myself, there were moments that hit especially hard. The collection captures the strange and often painful process of realizing that the life you have built may not actually be capable of holding who you are becoming. There are poems here that wrestle with compulsory heterosexuality, with longing, with wanting things you have been taught not to want, with trying to make peace with versions of yourself that survived by following rules you no longer believe in.
What I appreciated most was the lack of judgment. The speaker does not seem interested in condemning her former self. Instead, there is a tenderness toward past mistakes, past desires and past misunderstandings. Even when looking back on relationships that no longer serve her, the poems often feel reflective rather than bitter. There is heartbreak here, certainly, but also compassion.
The language itself is beautiful without feeling inaccessible. One thing that often intimidates me about poetry is the fear that I am missing something essential, that everyone else understands the poem while I stand outside looking in. I never felt that way with Abider. The collection is certainly literary and carefully crafted but its emotional core remains remarkably clear. The poems are rich with imagery and layered meaning, yet they never lose sight of feeling. Even when I did not fully grasp every reference or formal choice, I always understood what the poem wanted me to feel. And I felt a lot.
If I have one reason for settling on four stars rather than five, it is simply that poetry is such a personal experience. There were sections that resonated deeply and sections that felt more distant from me. Some poems lodged themselves in my memory immediately while others washed over me without leaving the same impression. That is not a flaw in the collection so much as the nature of poetry itself. Different readers will connect with different pieces. But even in the moments that did not fully land for me, I could still recognize the craftsmanship at work.
Ultimately, I think Abider is a collection about learning to choose yourself after years of choosing everyone else. It is about desire and grief, girlhood and womanhood, queer awakening and survival, but more than anything, it is about the difficult act of remaining faithful to your own becoming. By the end, Crowe arrives not at certainty or closure, but at something quieter and, I think, far more profound: the understanding that healing does not always mean moving on. Sometimes it means turning toward yourself with the same devotion you once reserved for other people. Sometimes it means deciding that your own life, your own joy, and your own truth are worth staying for. There is something deeply moving about that. Not because it promises healing or certainty, but because it offers something more honest: the decision to remain, to keep choosing yourself, and to finally become the place where your own love is allowed to stay.
I do not read poetry very often.
That feels like an important thing to say at the beginning because whenever I read a poetry collection, I always feel slightly out of my depth. I am not someone who can easily discuss meter or form or trace literary lineages with confidence. I am, first and foremost, a reader who responds to feeling. I know when a poem leaves me cold and I know when one manages to slip past all my defenses and settle somewhere uncomfortable and permanent inside me.
Abider did the latter.
Melissa Crowe returns again and again to the idea of staying. Staying in places that hurt. Staying loyal to versions of yourself that no longer fit. Staying attached to people long after love has transformed into something else entirely. The title itself becomes the collection’s beating heart. To abide can be an act of devotion, but it can also be a wound. It can be tenderness, self-erasure, and even survival. I think what makes Abider so compelling is that it understands all of those truths simultaneously.
This is, in many ways, a story of queer self-discovery but I appreciated that Crowe does not present that journey as a neat, triumphant revelation. There is no clean line from confusion to certainty. Instead, the collection feels deeply interested in the messiness of becoming. The speaker moves through rural girlhood, marriage, desire, grief, memory and self-recognition carrying all of her previous selves alongside her. Nothing is discarded or simplified. The child, the wife, the lover, the queer woman, the survivor all remain present, speaking to and through one another.
Crowe consistently resists easy narratives. The past is neither romanticized nor condemned. Love is neither salvation nor destruction. Desire is neither wholly liberating nor wholly painful. Everything exists in contradiction.
As a queer woman myself, there were moments that hit especially hard. The collection captures the strange and often painful process of realizing that the life you have built may not actually be capable of holding who you are becoming. There are poems here that wrestle with compulsory heterosexuality, with longing, with wanting things you have been taught not to want, with trying to make peace with versions of yourself that survived by following rules you no longer believe in.
What I appreciated most was the lack of judgment. The speaker does not seem interested in condemning her former self. Instead, there is a tenderness toward past mistakes, past desires and past misunderstandings. Even when looking back on relationships that no longer serve her, the poems often feel reflective rather than bitter. There is heartbreak here, certainly, but also compassion.
The language itself is beautiful without feeling inaccessible. One thing that often intimidates me about poetry is the fear that I am missing something essential, that everyone else understands the poem while I stand outside looking in. I never felt that way with Abider. The collection is certainly literary and carefully crafted but its emotional core remains remarkably clear. The poems are rich with imagery and layered meaning, yet they never lose sight of feeling. Even when I did not fully grasp every reference or formal choice, I always understood what the poem wanted me to feel. And I felt a lot.
If I have one reason for settling on four stars rather than five, it is simply that poetry is such a personal experience. There were sections that resonated deeply and sections that felt more distant from me. Some poems lodged themselves in my memory immediately while others washed over me without leaving the same impression. That is not a flaw in the collection so much as the nature of poetry itself. Different readers will connect with different pieces. But even in the moments that did not fully land for me, I could still recognize the craftsmanship at work.
Ultimately, I think Abider is a collection about learning to choose yourself after years of choosing everyone else. It is about desire and grief, girlhood and womanhood, queer awakening and survival, but more than anything, it is about the difficult act of remaining faithful to your own becoming. By the end, Crowe arrives not at certainty or closure, but at something quieter and, I think, far more profound: the understanding that healing does not always mean moving on. Sometimes it means turning toward yourself with the same devotion you once reserved for other people. Sometimes it means deciding that your own life, your own joy, and your own truth are worth staying for. There is something deeply moving about that. Not because it promises healing or certainty, but because it offers something more honest: the decision to remain, to keep choosing yourself, and to finally become the place where your own love is allowed to stay.
April 25, 2026
Poetry that is raw like reading directly into the author’s soul. You will feel every emotion through every word and every line. This is poetry for the queer and those who never feel seen. The power is in the way Crowe utilizes traditional poetry to really expand on what it means to feel. Their words express a desire to be seen in a world that lets you live truly free.
In this collection is a poem for everyone. In some way these words will make you deeply resonate with belonging. An emotional rollercoaster in the form of sonnets, prose, and rhymes. All opinions are my own. Thank you Melissa Crowe, University of Pittsburgh Press, and Netgalley for this advanced digital copy.
For more reviews, recommendations, and tarot readings, visit my blog https://brujerialibrary.wordpress.com
In this collection is a poem for everyone. In some way these words will make you deeply resonate with belonging. An emotional rollercoaster in the form of sonnets, prose, and rhymes. All opinions are my own. Thank you Melissa Crowe, University of Pittsburgh Press, and Netgalley for this advanced digital copy.
For more reviews, recommendations, and tarot readings, visit my blog https://brujerialibrary.wordpress.com
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I generally dont dabble much in poetry but this premise just seemed soooo intriguing that I requested for an arc and I was lucky enough to receive one on Netgalley!
This book is so incredibly powerful and I feel like no matter what kind of childhood you have had, there are certain parts that every queer woman can relate to. I will try to keep this as spoiler free as possible, but there were parts that I felt right to my soul, especially when the author spoke about their childhood and the boy-related pressure that comes with it. I thoroughly enjoyed this piece and I'm going to now look into the author's other stuff because I am an absolute sucker for strong sapphic women!!
This book is so incredibly powerful and I feel like no matter what kind of childhood you have had, there are certain parts that every queer woman can relate to. I will try to keep this as spoiler free as possible, but there were parts that I felt right to my soul, especially when the author spoke about their childhood and the boy-related pressure that comes with it. I thoroughly enjoyed this piece and I'm going to now look into the author's other stuff because I am an absolute sucker for strong sapphic women!!
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
... Meanwhile, I stay quiet in this
outlaw dark, lovely to myself, and deep. What I don't
too loudly claim is mine perhaps I'll get to keep.
- from "Whose Woods I am I Think I Know"
An autobiographical poetic cycle of queer being by way of making a pyre of yourself: to be warm, to warm, to not last. ( Precious, I'm saying, then extinct. The fault / is not the shoulder's warm or cold. The back is not the culprit, / even turned. Body is setting, not plot, whether burning or / burned ... ) On occasion funny in mundane and vulgar and melancholy ways. Embodied bright.
At some point in my reading, I tried counting up meter, one-handed on my phalanges, to correspond to haltingly read out syllables: lines expanded, down the length of the poem, then shrunk, but slightly. The poems of Abider start out columnar, even if not even. (Unevenness is where they most greatly persist. Enjambments confound me as I try to save and replicate quotes, annoyingly reminding me that all quotation is severance.)
Note: This review is based of an advanced digital review copy provided by University of Pittsburgh Press through NetGalley, which might impact me, in writing a review, in ways that are intricate and artful, which is to day – art being not altogether strictly distinguishable from lying, as Plato was worried about – not improbably misleading.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews