Some of the Children Were Listening

by Lauren Sanderson

Lyrical and dark, Lauren Sanderson's Some of the Children Were Listening begins with witness. With a voice uncommonly young and impossibly certain, these poems climb out of bed & sit on the stairs, eavesdropping on a world that wasn't meant for them. In quick turns and tight threads comes the violence of nature, the nature of violence. Sanderson moves fluidly across the personal and the universal, venturing into a world beyond witness; where the trees fall when the girls scream & everyone's daughter is a king.

Genres: Poetry

100 pages, Paperback

Published April 15, 2019

Reviews

[rhizo · Rating 4 out of 5]

with lines like “this is how they love; teeth sharp & bodies temporary” & “i want to put your heart in my mouth and bite down” this book is a triumph of deliberate harmony. the cultivated attention to the constant danger of being in the body of a woman, the adoration for lover and mother. wow just wow. and then of course sanderson’s imagery is just crisp and sensory as hell. i want to jump into the words. i want it to fossilize over my retinas.

[literaryelise · Rating 5 out of 5]

“For you I’d take off everything: my feet, my shouldered gun, / my eyes which I’m told hover too long.”

This is my fourth time reading this collection and it never fails to astonish me with its brilliance. Thank you Lauren, for your words. I aspire to be the type of poet that you are.

“It’s how all our prayers begin: men we love / crawling out of the forest, / licking blood from their lips.”

[Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rich was the adjective I think best describes this collection. I felt that the author put in a lot of effort to make each poem unique.