Hemlock

by Emilia Phillips

Hemlock, a chapbook chronicling a lonely summer lost to the brain’s raucous shouting, swings wildly between anxiety and joy, juggling questions and proclamations alike about god, the body, and gender-unrestrictive desire. Self-aggrandizing and self-deprecating all at once, the speaker here declares that “Yes, I belong to my excesses” but that the “body is // a mixed metaphor,” one that expands and contracts with one’s mental state, connecting to the world and retreating from it.

Genres: Poetry

38 pages, Paperback

First published March 27, 2019

About the author

Emilia Phillips is the author of a previous collection, Signaletics (University of Akron Press, 2013), and three chapbooks, most recently Beneath the Ice Fish Like Souls Look Alike (Bull City Press, 2015). She's received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Kenyon Review Writers' Workshop, U.S. Poets in Mexico, and Vermont Studio Center. Her poetry and lyric essays have appeared in Agni, Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, Ninth Letter, Ploughshares, Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Centenary College of New Jersey and the 32 Poems interviews editor.

Reviews

[Carla Sofia Sofia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compulsively readable, I devoured this in one sitting. Right from the start, Phillips knocks it out of the park with the opening poem, "Ladyfingers," and the chapbook stays consistently strong from there. Some favorite lines below:

"and wouldn't god use / they for their pronouns // or not use any at all // my hands made by some / myths in their image // bead full at the knuckles"
— Ladyfingers

"[...] like the seven-year // cicada I don't know / where all this anger // lives when it's not / winged"
— You're Filthy Cute And Baby You Know It

"Often blame sits loose / on my hipbones—clay thrown // on the wheel, spun unfingered to an apple / bottom. Sometimes my body is // a mixed metaphor, fixed brass / and a heaving sea in a season // of storms."
— Heavy (After Hieu Minh Nguyen)

If you're looking for a quick and captivating read, a strong recommendation to pick this book!

[Dev · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 stars

I finished this book yesterday and don’t remember anything about it besides wondering how all these poets don’t understand how to use punctuation. For the poems without punctuation it was hard to figure out where a sentence started and where one ended and it was like it was going on and on and on and on. I probably would have not finished, but the book was only 33 pages so it was hard not to finish.