Lest I Know Your Weakness

by Taylor Ramage

A twisted love story told in alternating poetic snapshots. Intrigue, tension, darkness, beauty–Carmilla and Laura experience it all as they traverse the ups and downs of their relationship through poetic dialogue. Love is alluring and terrifying.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT

52 pages, Paperback

Published February 11, 2019

About the author

Taylor Ramage is a poet and sci-fi/fantasy author of Puerto Rican descent. Her flash fiction has appeared in speculative and literary anthologies. She has a YA fantasy short story in the forthcoming Latine anthology Where Monsters Lurk and Magic Hides (Fall 2022). Her published poetry includes the collections, Forgive Us Our Trespasses and Lest I Know Your Weakness. Taylor is an avid love of stories in all forms.

Reviews

[E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

★★★★⭐ | This book is April's Sapphic Book Club read hosted by @sapphicliterature.

Her name was Carmilla
Her family was very ancient and noble
Her home lay in my caresses
and her promises
could not offend my ear

I love Carmilla! I watched the webseries. I saw the movie. I read the original novel. So, it is not a surprise that the existence of a poetry collection based on the story makes me pretty excited. And it's an erasure poetry collection created from erased pages of the original Carmilla in a form of alternating poems between Laura and Carmilla telling the story of their relationship.

Erasure poetry is created by taking a fragment of text and erasing words until you end up with a poem. With Sapphic Book Club, we did "a challenge" and tried to create such a poem and it's a really interesting process. I think it made me appreciate the whole books of those poems much more and I advise you to try as well!

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[Jas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was read for Sapphic Book Club, hosted by sapphicliterature.

While this wasn't necessarily my cup of tea, I'm glad I got to read this. I've read Carmilla a long while ago, and I really love the webseries, so I was curious to check this out. However, then I learnt this was actually erasure poetry, not just poetry inspired by Carmilla. It changed my approach. Somehow it kind of pushed me away. While I admire erasure poetry greatly as a challenging practice, it's definitely not easy, it just doesn't interest me that much.

I can tell the author is talented. The collection is so beautiful and smoothly flowing. It was built in such charming way, I enjoyed the language, but in the end it just didn't have that little thing that would've mesmerized me. Perhaps my expectations were different, and that's what let me down, not really the book itself.

[BadassCmd · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was the April 2019's Sapphic Book Club read hosted by sapphicbookclub.

I don't know why, but I had never really come across 'erasure poetry' before - or better, I saw poems like that but didn't know what specific kind of poetry that was.
So it's really cool that the author put an explanation of this technique in the front of the book.

As a first impression it felt a bit strange to me since this type of poetry doesn't entirely 'come from the author', so to say. But I still thought that the concept is really interesting.
I also got inspired to try it myself and while I turned out with something I liked, the process was definitely harder than I imagined it and I could never have enough patience to do a whole book and turn it into a story on itself and I applaud that.

The poems themselves were pretty well done, although I somehow didn't feel for them as much as I expected I would.
And I thought it would have been really nice to get an insight in the creative process of this collection somewhere in the end (as in like, shots of pages that have been worked with and marked however the author decided to mark them).

Still, would definitely recommend for all people who enjoyed any version of Carmilla or just people who enjoy poetry with a twist.

[Sophia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was the April book of the month for @sapphicbookclub

I have been a large fan of Carmilla and the several iterations I have found of it from the original Le Fanu adaptation to the more recent Carmilla webseries. This erasure poetry collection is another take on Carmilla that I really enjoyed. I was glad to see this story told in a poetry format. I also enjoyed that the author decided to present this as a dual point of view. I appreciated being able to see Carmilla's perspective in this tale of romance.

I would recommend this poetry collection to someone who is a large fan of Carmilla. This is definitely a take on the story that should not be missed.

[maani · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was April's book of the month for Sapphic Book Club and I thoroughly enjoyed it! I've only read a tiny bit of Carmilla but really liked the webseries, and I loved the way the author created a flowing conversation between Laura and Carmilla through poetry. I especially loved how she created such coherent and lyrical dialogue all through erasure poetry - I tried it out myself after having a read and it's definitely not nearly as easy as it seems - but she made it seem completely effortless. A beautiful read.

[Jackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was April’s read as part of the Sapphic Book Club.

This was a cute short read. I had never heard of erasure poetry but it is a fun idea and well executed!

[Nathaniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s my fault for not looking up what erasure poetry is. I was expecting blackout poetry (the author has a collection of blackout poetry) but that’s not what this is. It’s just poetry compiled from words of another work. The poems were gorgeous and I am excited to read more from the author. I just had to get over my misinformed disappointment lol

[Phoenix · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the April Sapphic book of the month for the Sapphic book club.

So, firstly, if you aren't familiar with the book or any adaptations of Carmilla, I recommend reading the book or watching the web series the author mentions in her acknowledgements before reading this. I had not done so, but found myself looking up a summary on wikipedia to understand the backstory behind the characters. Despite I suspect missing a lot of what this poetry collection has to offer, it... resonated with me, in a way that's difficult to explain. The part of my experience that I can articulate, is due to the book being as it says "erasure poems", a term I'd never heard before. Despite not reading the source material, I found thinking about how clearly different the portrayal of Carmilla and Laura's love would have been in it, and yet these poems draw entirely from the original novel. It sort of makes me think about the nature of words and storytelling, and how much difference looking from a different side can make. Honestly, it left me feeling somewhat... hollow, after reading it, but in a good way? Like there was an unexamined philosophical hole that I finally discovered, if that makes any sense at all. This is frankly a terrible review, and I apologize, but I highly recommend the book, both for some beautiful poems and for an existential examining of the nature of literature that comes up when thinking about what the author did, and how many things can be found 'between the lines', so to speak.

[Aliya Bree Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a big fan of the CARMILLA novella (and the indie novella CARMILLA AND LAURA) I was thrilled to come across LEST I KNOW YOUR WEAKNESS. Erasure poetry was something I was only vaguely aware of before reading, and it was beautiful how the author captured the essence of Carmilla and Laura through the original words on the novella’s pages. The poetry is compiled thoughtfully and beautifully, and feels real to the characters’ experiences and voices.

I was thoroughly transported by the poetry, and the story interweaved between each collective poem. It’s hard for me to not immediately consume poetry in one sitting, which is why I did multiple read throughs of this chapbook, and each one hit me harder than the next. For fans of Carmilla, I whole heartedly recommend picking up this book, and for poetry lovers in general, I think you will find something extra special on the pages of this chapbook.

[Rachel Clair · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lyrical and captivating. I loved how the author chose to make the poems flow as a story instead of a collection of related themes. Reading it felt like I was transported back in time observing their budding romance and emotion. Beautiful 🥰