Incompleteness

by Amy DeBellis

This is a collection of poems about, on the surface, love. But on a deeper level, and with raw honesty, the writing explores not just the beauty of love but the insanity of it, the darkness and the falseness that it can create. It ends not with a neat conclusion but with a sense of ambiguity, because our stories are never really over, at least not while we are still alive.

70 pages, Paperback

Published November 4, 2016

About the author

Amy DeBellis's writing has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net, has appeared in the Wigleaf Top 50 Longlist, and can be found in X-R-A-Y, Uncharted, Passages North, Write or Die, Trampset, Pithead Chapel, Fractured, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and over 50 other literary journals.

She has served as the judge for two literary contests: The Feign Lit Fiction Prize and the Moonlit Getaway Fiction Prize.

Her literary inspirations include Donna Tartt (her favorite novel of all time is The Secret History), Chuck Palahniuk, R.F. Kuang, Mona Awad, Hanya Yanagihara, and Carmen Maria Machado.

Alongside her fiction, she is passionate about raising awareness of chronic illness, and advocates for greater understanding of the disabled community.

Reviews

[Katrina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting, lyrical, dark. Beautiful, raw language forms a portrait of romance and grief.

[Nadine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amy is an phenomenal writer. Her words are art. Piercing, chilling and thoughtful. The way she strings a sentence together blows my mind. Looking forward to reading more by her.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love the minimalism of the cover. Beautiful writing, and I got a deep sense of sadness from a lot of these poems. The conflicting emotions added some depth too. A lot of them were very open ended and hard to figure out what exactly they're about, but I guess that was the point.

[Lauren Monperin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this. Some of the poems could have been better edited, or really just taken out entirely because they added nothing, but some were truly beautiful ("Manchester" and "Deafness" were standouts). The title poem was absolutely haunting and I think best sums up the collection as a whole.

[Bellatuscana Bellatuscana · Rating 3 out of 5]

While DeBellis is a great writer, I found myself not a real fan of the ambiguity. Her poems are very hard to read, but in a good way. In a way that you have to read her poems again to understand it. The poems were a conclusion that in the absence of her ex love leaving her for someone he will love more that she came to accept it and feel peace in his absence as well as her depression. While this is very similar to my writing style and a book I am working on right now, I didn't necessarily like it in her. Is that terrible? I do recommend it though to anyone who would want to read about the loss of heartbreak. I do also believe I could read this again someday, and appreciate it more deeply.