Life of the Party

by Olivia Gatwood

i'm a good girl, bad girl, sad girl, dream girl
girl next door sunbathing in the driveway
i wanna be them all at once, i wanna be
all the girls i've ever loved

Lauded for the power of her writing and having attracted an online fan base of millions for her extraordinary spoken-word performances, Olivia Gatwood is a thrilling new voice in contemporary feminist poetry. In Life of the Party, she weaves together her own coming of age with an investigation into our culture's romanticization of violence against women. In precise, searing language--at times blistering and riotous, at times soulful and exuberant--she explores the boundary between what is real and what is imagined in a life saturated with fear. How does one grow from a girl to a woman in a world wracked by violence? Where is the line between perpetrator and victim? What is the meaning of bravery? Visceral and haunting, this multifaceted collection illustrates that what happens to our bodies makes us who we are.

Genres: Poetry, Feminism, Nonfiction, LGBT, Queer, Adult, Audiobook

153 pages, Paperback

First published August 20, 2019

About the author

Olivia Gatwood is a nationally touring poet, performer, and educator from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her work has been featured on HBO and Verses & Flow, as well as in Muzzle Magazine, Bustle and The Huffington Post, among others. She has been a finalist at the National Poetry Slam, Women of the World Poetry Slam, and Brave New Voices. She is a graduate of Pratt Institute’s Fiction Program.

Reviews

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Olivia Gatwood, 27, speaks with brutal honesty to women of her generation. Poetry is subjective; I found some great and some not so much, but she always speaks with great power. In the introduction she writes about her obsession with true crime and explains how it began. I'm old enough to be her mother and I thought we had it hard because we couldn't talk about violence against women and girls -- against us.. My experience was we could speak of it only to our friends, in secret. We couldn't tell anyone else when we were raped and molested. There was no 24/7 cable channel devoted exclusively to murder, no barrage of programs about it, no true crime podcasts, web sites or social media. The term 'serial killer" had not yet been coined. We knew our own experiences but lived in a bubble, for me and a lot of us until Tori Amos's "Me and a Gun." Now there's so much out there it's taken a toll on some members of Olivia's generation in ways I hadn't thought about until I read "Life of the Party." People like her, sensitive and scared, can watch and read and listen and ruminate about it constantly. It's with her since she was a child.

A lot of her poems deal with crimes against women, often murder. She also writes about relationships with male and female partners, and about her babysitter. But murder is never far from her mind. The poem from which the following excerpt is taken is about how eleven sets of adult female bones were found buried together near her home in New Mexico. The bones belonged to one black and ten Hispanic sex workers. She was a teenager when they were found but the oldest bones were buried there when she was still a child.

from "Eubank & Candelaria, 2009":

"I have heard men refer to the number of women
they've slept with as their body count.
In 2009, out by the volcanoes
a mass grave, eleven women and one fetus
found buried in a row like white lines
in a parking lot...
...The papers named him
the West Mesa Bone Collector
and named the girls transient
and troubled and missing for years."

Gatwood, who is white, addresses the contrast in how women of color who are murdered are dealt with by society, mass media and police in contrast to white women. The most accessible poem in the collection is about JonBenet Ramsey. It's tighter than some of Gatwood's other work but has no subtext. JonBenet was just a few years younger than Olivia,, who shows tenderness for the victim but no one else.

from "Murder of a Little Beauty":

"dab your eye, we know you like it gory
only the blondes get a cover story
girls go missing right around the corner
but she needs a tiara for us to mourn her
naturally attractive, exceptionally bright
how many ways can we say the word white?"

So true and so well said. There were poems I totally didn't get. That's normal for me (and a lot of us) with poetry but something tells me her generation understands what I didn't. I appreciate the writing, her directness and strong voice. I recommend this to anyone who can handle it, and I don't only mean the triggers, I mean the sadness too. Her generation and future ones know so much about so many things, it's a blessing and a curse. Still, even today some girls have no one to talk to about these things. I'm glad they have the powerful voice of Olivia Gatwood to validate their experiences and emotions. And I'm glad the rest of us do too.

[Gabby · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve read some poetry over the years and I’ve discovered some of it works for me and some of it doesn’t. This poetry collection just didn’t really work for me, I appreciated the message, but I feel like a lot of it went over my head to be honest, most of the poems left me feeling confused instead of inspired. All these poems are about violence against women and true crime stories, and some of them were very dark and unsettling. I really liked the first poem, but that’s about it. These poems feel more like a stream of consciousness and thoughts, as opposed to actual poems, I guess I just prefer a more conventional style of poetry.

This might be more of a “it’s not you, it’s me” situation, but poetry is very subjective and I found this collection to be just okay.

[Reading_ Tamishly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really intense yet the writing style is damn too congested and boring.

[Norah Una Sumner · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe I am tired of hearing people talk about the murder of girls like it is both beautiful and out of the ordinary.

I have read Olivia Gatwood's New American Best Friend last year and, as much as I feel like this book was better, it still wasn't for me. The topic is important but dealt with weirdly and somewhat inconsistently. This is more of a prose poetry collection and I personally am not a big fan of it, generally. There are some poems which I really liked, but the amount of those which left me absolutely confused instead of making a point are definitely in the majority. I think it's needless to say that Olivia and me are just not made for each other.

[Marnie (Enchanted Bibliophile) · Rating 3 out of 5]

“a memory is a story told so well, it becomes part of the body”



This one was much darker and more brutal than I anticipated. A lot of times I just had to put it down and “let go” of what I just read.
While I wasn’t always a fan of the style used, the topics coved made for an intense, vicious read that made the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

[Jillian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely love Olivia Gatwood and her poetry, but if I'm being honest, Life of the Party sat on my nightstand for a while. It sat there while I read other things: some for class and some for pleasure. I knew I would have to be in the right frame of mind to really get into Life of the Party. Gatwood's poetry, while excellent, is not easy. It is not gently reassuring or encouraging. Instead, it asks you tough questions and forces you to examine your fears and biases. Sometimes, you need to prepare yourself for it.

"The truth is: It is a privilege to have your body looked for."

As a collection, Life of the Party is interested in one central theme: the romanticization of violence against women and what implications that romanticization has for women living in the world. Gatwood's author's note itself could be the beginning of an essay collection on this topic. She is so good at articulating her fear, her fear that is stoked by both living in a world where women are victimized and in a media landscape that is obsessed with these stories. True crime as a genre, she argues, perpetuates misogyny, racism, and sexualized violence. Women are props in these stories, usually young, beautiful, white women, who drive brave men forward to solve crimes.

"Sometimes, the writer in me wants to remember just so I can give you a story."

As soon as I read this author's note, I wanted to give the collection five stars. Before I even read the poetry, I knew Gatwood understood what bugs me (and so many other women) about true crime. It is a genre that centers around women without ever focusing on them. It's a genre in which we are beaten and raped and killed, and yet that is all that is ever known about us. Also, largely, it leaves at the violence that occurs every day to women of color, sex workers, and transgender women. I have no appetite for true crime, but I do consume large amounts of Law and Order: SVU. My feelings on that are just as complicated. On one hand, it is cathartic, but also it still largely centers on sexual violence against women without really ever getting to know them.

"I want to know what it means to survive something. does it just mean I get to keep my body?"

The excellent author's note aside, Life of the Party is a fantastic collection. As per usual, Gatwood writes about her complicated relationships with other girls, the casual misogyny and violence she encounters when hanging out with men, and her sexual awakening as a young girl. Woven through these poems, however, is an undercurrent of murder, rape, and sexual violence. In Murder of a Little Beauty, she examines the media frenzy surrounding the JonBenet Ramsey murder. In The Boy Says He Loves Ted Bundy But Doesn't Laugh About It, she talks about the reckoning of a young man who loves Ted Bundy and realizes that maybe that means such violence is inside him too. Several poems feature Aileen Wuornos as if she's giving advice or being written to. These poems steep Gatwood's collection in the history of true crime while offering commentary on the genre.

"Maybe I see myself in the worst of it. Maybe if I can imagine myself in the shallow water, you should too. Maybe I am tired of hearing people talk about the murder of girls like it is both beautiful and out of the ordinary."

And then there are the babysitter interludes. These are perhaps the strongest poems in the collection. Gatwood begins by telling a story about her babysitter growing up. We follow the story of that babysitter: how the babysitter was a talented equestrian, how her dog bit her father in the calf, how the babysitter once smashed her father's hand in the hinges of her bedroom door, how she grew rebellious and eventually turned to heroin... How it came out that she had been sexually abused by her father and no one noticed... How she died in the hospital Gatwood's mother worked at. By including this story in small interludes, we get an vision of how sexual assault and abuse can wreck someone and how they can be reacting to it without anyone being the wiser. It gives an idea of the weight girls like this carry when there is no recourse for them.

"i hate telling people how it happened. there is a difference between fact & truth. the fact is that she overdosed. the truth is that he killed her."

Life of the Party is the best collection of poetry I've read this year. I would even venture to say it's the best volume of poetry published in 2019. If you're interested in feminist poetry, true crime, or any of the other topics I discussed in this review, I'd highly recommend it. And all of Gatwood's work. She is incredible. As one of my favorite comedians Jamie Loftus said in a blurb on the back of the book, "Imagine, we get to live in the age of Olivia Gatwood."

[Bree Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

"how can I talk about my grandmother without also mentioning that if everyone is a teen girl, then so are the birds, their soaring cliques, their squawking throats, and the sea, of course, the sea, its moody push and pull, the way we drill into it, fill it with our trash, take and take and take from it and still it holds up each time we walk into it. "

Five heartbreakingly beautiful stars. This collection of poetry is hauntingly stunning. A well crafted cautionary tale from a poetess that is a complete force to be reckoned with. I loved the very beginning where the author discusses the rabbit hole of true crime she found herself falling down and how she asked herself what role do poets play in true crime against young girls and women. She goes on to write this frightening collection of poetry that I couldnt get enough of. Well done Gatwood. I can't wait to hold a physical copy of this gem to revisit over and over again.

[Fawzy Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I've read, pfft, hundreds of books of poetry in this blessed lil life and none of them made me feel riotously proud to have been a teenage girl. In the book, Gatwood is working through the rational terror of having a body the world thinks is theirs. These poems mirrored, validated, explored, and transformed so much anxiety and fear I have felt -- as a tomboy kid, a teenage girl, and as a genderqueer adult working through persistent internalized femmephobia. I identify as gnc and am excited to hand-sell this to anyone who has ever been any kind of girl in this world.

The book gains more and more focus, revving its engines all 147 pages so the girl-notquitegirl-femmeperson in the dark knows there's a gang in the dark not to save her but to witness her saving herself. It is apparent these poems were crafted with much love for anyone who has been or will be feminine or womxn or girl or femme or soft or betrayed.

Lastly, reading these poems it occurred to my body that I might feel something other than shame. My brain knows this, has known it, but it takes time for the body to know. These poems spoke directly to my body. Afterward I felt strong for having been through what this world does to people it thinks are girls. And I felt powerful.

[Beatrix · Rating 4 out of 5]

The artsy cover drew me to this, it is so beautiful.
The poems inside were not, and I don´t mean that in a negative sense, this collection deals with the topic of violence against women , which of course is not something that is easy to read.
But I knew I wanted to read it, I love contemporary poetry, and when the topic is feminism, then even more. I haven´t read this author before, but I was in awe of some of her words, I didn´t love all the poems, but some were pure art. When I Say That We Are All Teen Girls is a modern masterpiece.

[Rachel León · Rating 5 out of 5]

SO GOOD.

[Dana Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could talk for hours about how deeply I adore Olivia Gatwood's writing, but I won't bore everyone. No contemporary poet has ever, in my opinion, captured the raw experience of being a woman in the way that Gatwood does. This collection captures the fear, the anxiety and the hatred which come with womanhood, but also the joy and the curiosity. I love this collection, and have already recommended it to pretty much everyone I know.

[Kristy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book of poems that focus on violence against women. I first heard of Gatwood from watching Button Poetry spoken word. Some of her poems from there are featured here.

[Carey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sealey Challenge 2024: 5/31

This poetry collection stood out to me with its focus on violence against women and true crime stories. I am a fan of the popular podcast Crime Junkie, but much like Olivia Gatwood sometimes listening to such dark and unsettling themes is not the best for my anxiety and, of course, I agree that it has changed the way I view the world around me. Thus, this poetry collection sounded like it was right up my alley!

In the introduction, Gatwood delves into her fascination with true crime and its origins, prompting me to reflect on my own experiences growing up in a world where the messages about violence against women were evolving. Just two decades ago, discussions around violence against women were significantly different. There were no dedicated podcasts or social media pages addressing these issues. While we were aware of serial killers and ongoing crimes, public awareness of how much crime was happening and how cases were solved was rather limited, with little focus on victims and their families to boot. Today, the abundance of true crime content can be both a positive and negative, as different sources approach the most horrific moments of real people’s lives differently, which can also deeply affect its consumers. Gatwood's critical analysis of the genre highlights the problematic aspects of how true crime has become sensationalized and what this means in a world that seems to love reading about missing and murdered women without actually helping find justice for them.

The strongest parts of this collection are when Gatwood is discussing her own experiences with true crime and growing up in a world that provided her with ample amounts of anxiety. Gatwood effectively articulates her fear, heightened by living in a world that victimizes women and a media landscape obsessed with such stories. She argues that the true crime genre perpetuates misogyny, racism, and sexualized violence, often portraying women as mere props in narratives driven by brave men solving crimes. This perpetuates a society that hyper-sexualizes women and romanticizes violence against them. Consequently, women are often held responsible for what happens to them and for preventing such incidents. Gatwood seeks to deconstruct this narrative, questioning how we reached this point and reimaging a future free from constant fear and anxiety. Like Gatwood, I too long for a world where I don’t have to worry about the coming night.

While many of Gatwood's poems center on crimes against women, she also explores her relationships with both male and female partners and shares stories from her life throughout the years. Some poems resonated deeply with me, especially those reflecting my anxieties connected to true crime. I especially found the way Gatwood interweaved the stories of her babysitter’s life throughout the collection to be a real sign of her talent in creating cohesion to bring most of the themes together. Yet, I found most of the poems about her previous relationships felt out of place in the flow and tone of the other poems. Overall though, this is still a collection I would recommend to others with the caveat that you definitely need to be prepared for how dark this collection will get!

[Lauren Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the absolute best. I will make everyone I care about read this.

[grace 🐈‍⬛ · Rating 4 out of 5]

perfectly encompasses the meaning of girlhood. the good, the bad, & how the good is always on the edge of a precipice.

[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

«When they call you a bitch, say thank you. Say thank you, very much.»

[Diana · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m not sure what everybody finds so profound (or remotely bearable for that matter) about this poetry collection.

It’s straight up trauma-porn with no prose or worthwhile insight.

This collection is a gang-r*pe-filled commentary on r*pe culture that fetishizes serial killers. Yuck.

[emma charlton · Rating 5 out of 5]

sealey challenge day 5 / still easily the best poetry collection I've ever read!

[Brend · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reads like a diary but, sadly, I'm not a suburban mom with trust issues so I don't care about other women's diaries (unless it's taylor swift).

[Anne-Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

(disclaimer : i am not a big reader of poetry)
this collection has some of the most beautiful poems i've ever read - 'ode to my lover's left hand' hello????? how can language even do things like that? i've loved olivia for a few years now, i think she's a brillant writer, outstanding performer, very funny in her podcast. theorically, i love a thematically cohesive poetry book and the narrative construction of life of the party was definitely one of its stronger points. however, i really didn't connect with said theme : murdered women and society's fascination with them. mainly, i do not share the author's devouring fear of being murdered nor do i consume true crime media. despite all the disclaimers about the romanticisation of certain (white) murders, a lot of the poems were guilty of it, and seemed to me too clouded in fear to critically examine it. nevertheless, the writing was really poignant with all its glorious personnal details, memoiresque reminiscions and love for girls. i've already read it twice and i'm excited for what olivia is going to write next.

[Kaitlyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the best books of poetry I have ever read. It was a brilliant exploration of society's fascination with murder and the stories of victims, as well as being part memoir. I want everyone to read this.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book that Dead Girls wanted to be, but much more powerful.

[Olive · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars

For some reason I never connected the dots that listening to poetry on audio would be the best way to consume it so uh... that's on me
This was one of the best poetry collections I've ever read, just an absolute emotional gut punch

[ria · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I appreciate the conversation that this poetry collection tries to spike in regards to the way true crime objectifies women, I found I didn’t connect to the poems in any major way. They were atmospheric and appropriate for the subject in question, but not moving in any way. If anything, I think I liked the author’s note at the beginning the best. There is a lot to be said about how true crime treats its victims, how it tends to romanticize the heinous tragedies women endure, how more often than not true crime tends to be presented through racist and misogynistic perspectives. I wish this collection had been a bit bolder than it turned out to be, because from the author’s note alone I was hooked. That being said here is a (rather long) passage I thought was very well put, and deserves a more thorough discussion: “I want to believe that the motivation behind most true crime is to bring to light the epidemic of women’s murder worldwide, to use nonfiction storytelling as a method of illuminating a clear pattern. But I don’t believe that. If that were true, it wouldn’t focus on crimes committed by random strangers, and instead would reveal the much more common perpetrators: men whom these women knew and often loved. If true crime were truly mission-oriented, it would focus on the cases that are not explicitly perverse and shocking, the ones that are familiar, fast, and happen at home. If true crime sought to confront the reality of violence against women, it would not rely so heavily on fear-mongering narratives of cisgender white girls falling victim to men of color. Instead, it would acknowledge that indigenous women experience the highest rates of homicide, often at the hands of white men. It would depict the stories of the several transgender women murdered each month, or the countless black, brown, and indigenous women who have gone missing without so much as an investigation. [...] True crime, while being a genre that so many women rely on for contorted validation, is, simultaneously, a perpetuator of misogyny, racism, and sexualized violence—all of which is centered around one, beloved, dead girl. It is a genre primarily produced by men.”
I am giving this 3 stars (which I personally consider a good rating) because, like I said, I can see what the author was trying to do, and I appreciate that. I also realise that poetry is a very subjective genre, and while I may not have connected to the poems, or thought that they spoke to me in regards to the overarching subject in any significant way, doesn’t mean it won’t do it for other people.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

TW: violence, sexual assault, self-harm, death

***

I first discovered Olivia Gatwood through a video of her reading one of her poems (I can’t remember which one), but I remember it really touched me. A few years later, I saw Life of the Party at the bookstore, and I made the connection. I bought it, and it sat on my bookshelf for a while, due to its heavy topics. It took me a few months to finish this book, too. Sometimes I felt so overwhelmed by the topics and their visceral imagery that I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the book for a few days, even weeks. Overall, I’d rate this as a solid book of poetry that covers a broad range of topics: sexual assault/rape, domestic violence, and murder are the main ones, but there’s also poems about love and coming-of-age. Often these contrasting themes are placed in the same poems, so you might start out reading about a toxic relationship and end the poem smiling at how the poet is with someone new who loves them in a healthy way. I found myself crying after finishing certain poems but completely unfazed after finishing others. Concerning the latter, I sometimes felt Gatwood was, quite frankly, unoriginal in metaphors or descriptions or even just the concepts of the poems in general. As a poet myself, I know it’s hard to tackle such a common experience in a new light, and she certainly did that in some of her poems; others, though, I just felt were reminiscent of tumblr circa 2014. Overall, I think Gatwood is a solid poet, and I will probably purchase more of her works in the future.

[Deseray · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only gave 3 stars because I think I’m accepting the fact that poetry just isn’t for me.

But there were a few poems that genuinely stuck out to me and made me feel something. I think my favourites were

“She lit up every room she walked into”
“My grandmother asks why I don’t trust men”
“My man”
“Addendum to no baptism”
“First grade, 1998”

[Rachel Stienberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I waited an eternity for this book to be released, and it was so worth it. Gatwood clearly masters translating true crime and fear to poetry, while revealing the intimate nature of girlhood and obsession.

Highly recommend this book, or her previous collection.

[aylin · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 / 5

I am afraid that outside of here is just another here. I am afraid I will spend the rest of my life hoping to build myself in the vision of someone else. What am I, if not yours? What do I do with my hands when they are just hands?

[vanshika · Rating 4 out of 5]

an incredible book. but i’ll definitely need to reread it in a few months to appreciate it fully. 10/10 recommended.

[Menestrella · Rating 4 out of 5]

La tristezza del mondo in cui viviamo. Mi è sembrato di guardare le notizie o leggere il telegiornale.

Consiglio di leggere prima questa raccolta di poesie crude, realistiche e non, arroccate e spaventose nella loro verità, e poi di guardare il film di Zöe Kravitz Blink Twice per avere una sensazione di "karma".