we don't have a compass but i'm sure we'll find home

by Raquel Isabelle de Alderete

A collection of poems written in response to anonymously submitted secrets. Your stories as interpreted by a poet. Everything that happens to you is important.

Genres: Poetry

206 pages, Paperback

First published February 25, 2015

Reviews

[chelsegoose · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars - some of these poems hit me really hard, but i'm glad i don't relate to them as much as would have 4 years ago

[Val Brook · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love some of her other work, but I found this rather too intense/repetitive; even when the submitted secrets are quite vague, the poems come back to a handful of themes (presumably those closest to the author), much of which I find more depressing rather than insightful. Some poems are definitely worth reading, but save yourself the trouble and look at some of her other work (which is excellent)

[Morgan Watkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

ruined me.

[David Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is some value for people who have gone through a dark place in their minds to see their thoughts and experiences reflected back on them. I sometimes find it hard to stomach the poetry of depression, the guiding principle of which seems to be that art is born in the rawness of trauma. I have always felt that poetry lives in speaking the truth with the power of knowledge, which is perhaps why, having learned to recognize the symptoms of depression in myself, I find it so uncomfortable to watch the truth mingle so closely with the lies a depressed brain tells itself.

There is some fine poetry to be found here, but the relentless assault on my capacity to empathize with every anonymous soul who wrote prompts about hating themselves or wanting to be dead left me numb by the end. Have I forgotten what it's like to be a teenager, when the lightest breeze against the heart might provoke an existential crisis? Very possible. I hope all of these folks can one day enjoy the luxury of forgetting such things before it's too late.

[Bridget · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not for me. I wasn’t a fan of the overwhelmingly intense subject matter, which I felt was overly engineered, even when the secrets the author was sent as prompts allowed for a more varied interpretation. I do appreciate more commentary on mental illness in literature, but here it was so overused it didn't feel very constructive.

I also felt the writing was very tired in places, and the same dynamics, phrases and imagery kept being used over and over again. The narrator of each poem didn't feel very distinct, and it made the collection as a whole drag. There were a few poems that I liked because they offered a fresh, cohesive form, even if they didn’t really offer fresh concepts. There was definitely talent in here - there were lines of imagery I thought were really beautiful. The poems just really needed better foundations and some reworking.

[Tucker · Rating 3 out of 5]

As indicated in the book's description, these poems are imaginative extrapolations of "secrets" that were anonymously posted to the Internet. What is not mentioned in the description is that these secrets appear to come entirely from high-school and college-age girls and the subject matter is exclusively devoted to eating disorders, cutting, angst about ex-boyfriends, confusion about friendships, meeting parental expectations, and the completed suicides of friends. There's about 200 untitled poems with unnamed characters so this is quite a lot on this subject and it feels very repetitive. It's the same issues told in the same voice. That said, there are many good lines that are relevant for older people as well.

okay, okay, stop me if you heard this one.
anxiety, starvation, and self-hatred all walk into a
body and start to drink every last scrap of hope
from where the bartender is suffering. the punchline
is that they end up burning the whole building down. (p. 58)

we are sitting on the couch and he's flipping through
our psych homework when he tells me that he doesn't
understand why people with depression don't just
perk up

and i want to tell him that you cannot light a fire
in space, i want to tell him that we are only organic
compounds and there is no perk up functional group...(p. 76)

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars -- I really enjoyed it, although I didn't relate to the subject matter as much as I might have a few years ago (which is a good thing...)