I Hope This Finds You Well: Poems

by Kate Baer

Kate Baer returns with a collection of erasure poems created from notes she received from followers, supporters and detractors—an art form that reclaims the vitriol from online trolls and inspires readers to transform what is ugly or painful in their own lives into something beautiful.

“I'm sure you could benefit from jumping on a treadmill”

“Women WANT a male leader...It’s honest to god the basic human playbook”

These are some of the thousands of online messages Kate Baer has received. Like countless other writers—particularly women—with internet profiles, as Kate’s online presence grew, so did the darker messages crowding her inbox. These missives from strangers have ranged from “advice” and opinions to outright harassment.

At first these messages resulted in an immediate delete and block. Until, on a whim, Baer decided to transform the cruelty into art, using it to create fresh and intriguing poems. These pieces, along with ones made from notes of gratitude and love, as well as from the words of public figures, have become some of her most beloved work. Baer offers us a lesson in empowerment, showing how we too can turn bitterness into beauty.

Genres: Poetry, Feminism, Nonfiction, Adult, Audiobook, Womens, Contemporary

96 pages, Paperback

First published November 9, 2021

About the author

Kate Baer is the 3x New York Times bestselling author of What Kind Of Woman, I Hope This Finds You Well, & And Yet. Her work has also been published in The New Yorker, Literary Hub, Huffington Post and The New York Times.

Reviews

[Kate Baer · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone who posted a one star review before you read it, I wrote this book for you <3

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

This whole book is such a flex and I am here for it. Poet Kate Baer returns after the wildly successful and wonderful What Kind of Woman: Poems with a collection of erasure poetry that finds inspiration in the hate mail she receives. Baer takes these letters that range anywhere from unsolicited advice or spam emails to violent and openly misogynist aggression and transforms them into poetic gold on the opposing page. It is a wonderful way to deny the hatred these toxic emails seek and subvert it into something beautiful and empowering, leaving the original behind as a monument to vileness and pushing into a new horizon of hope. It also becomes an art piece that comments on online harassment and aggression that is exponentially worse for women.



‘Even though I know you will probably just make this into one of your “poems”...’ begins a toxic email about weight shaming and some weird commentary on his own girlfriend that, in Baer’s creative hands, result in a full erasure poem which reads (if putting it as a single sentence) ‘Even though you will make women lose Their love I will bring them to courage I will bring them home.’ I really respect Baer for publicly bearing the burden of harrassment but using it as an opportunity for art and to reach out in solidarity to others that likely experience similar harassment. It is a way to laugh together at online assholes but also a unique way to realize you can find beauty in everything, even picking apart threats or rants to create an uplifting poem.



While most of these erasures come from Baer’s own many online inboxes, scattered within them are erasure poems of statements from public officials. The notorious Trump confession about raping women because he is a star gets the Baer treatment, as well as death threats from January 6 terrorists and that gross ‘advice’ Joseph Epstein wrote in the Wall Street Journal about how he doesn’t think a doctorate in education is impressive.

This is a fun little collection, especially if you like erasures and makes for an interesting cultural artifact of our current political climate in the US as well as of the social media age. Worth a read for sure.

4/5

[Bel Rodrigues · Rating 5 out of 5]

"it's funny how men go ahead
and have daughters
even though
they can't fathom
what daughters
can
be."

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I hope this finds you well was published earlier this year I knew it would be a must read for me. As expected, I devoured this collection in one sitting and continue to think about how creative, plucky and empowering these poems are long after reading.

Very cleverly written erasure poetry. Kate Baer is incredibly talented.

[Jennifer ~ TarHeelReader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quick thoughts:

I Hope This Finds You Well is a slim collection of poetry at less than 80 pages with full on power.

Kate Baer took another look at the erasing, dismissive, and angry online messages she’d received and turned them into poetry.

Not only is her effort clever, it’s relatable and empowering. At times, I was amused, too.

There’s comfort here because of how and what Kate shares- we are never alone in our emotions. I’ll be picking up Baer’s What Kind of Woman asap.

I received a gifted copy.

Many of my reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com and instagram: www.instagram.com/tarheelreader

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

“I’m sure you could benefit from jumping on a treadmill.”

“Women WANT a male leader . . . It’s honest to god the basic human playbook.”

I am kind of a fan of what is now being called “erasure poetry,” which is a cousin to what we used to call "found" poetry. The idea for me as a creative writing teacher was this: You go to the newspaper, for instance, pick out any article, and find words from the article to make up a poem. You “found” the words from another source to make something completely different thing of your own, perhaps a commentary on the article, perhaps not.

A poet I know used a very mundane memoir by a military general, boring, and made beautiful poems out of it through the process of erasure. Beauty out of the mundane, like WC Williams makes a poem from a read wheelbarrow. Now we are calling this process “erasure” or redaction works as well, since that is how you do it.

Baer's book is a collection of “erasure poems” that take the nasty online messages she receives about her work, striking out words she doesn't like, to create new poems. And we see on the left side of each page the source of her poems. She is trolled mainly by men for her feminist perspective, and she takes those lemons and makes lemonade from it.

So I like that she does this, and uses erasure to “erase” in a way the nastiness to respond to the trolls, but I am not generally a huge fan of the “poems” she comes up with. They are more like quips or footnotes to make it clear what these guys are really about. And with a sense of humor, which is a good model for us, too. But I liked it.

Here’s a way to show her process:

https://www.today.com/tmrw/kate-baer-...

[Julie Ehlers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book Four of my October poetry project! This is a book of erasure poems, a form I'm not too familar with, but I genuinely appreciated how Baer took some horribly toxic messages and turned them into something positive. 3.5, rounded up. Thank you you to HarperPerennial for the advance copy.

[Jules KG · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not a big reader of blackout poetry but I really did enjoy these poems. In my opinion, it is very tricky to write evocative poetry when limited to certain words in a certain order, but I think the original piece being shown before the poem tended to have a very feeling effect. I haven't read Baer's other work but I definitely plan to now. I'm even more excited to read her poetry in free form as opposed to her well-done, but restrictive, blackout poetry work.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Perennial for the ARC.

[Marci · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powerful, clever and pretty badass tbh!!! This collection is one that will stay with me long from now.

[Scottsdale Public Library]

This phenomenal collection of poems is unlike anything I have read before. As a published author with an online presence, Kate Baer is familiar with strangers on the internet and their hateful comments or messages. One day Baer decided to transform the ugly messages into something beautiful. Through what she calls “erasure poetry”, Baer took a screenshot of the original message and then erased words to create a poem. She posted the original message alongside the created poem on her Instagram giving new context and meaning to the words. I Hope This Finds You Well is a collection of these erasure poems that are heartbreaking, funny, and empowering. Some of my favorites include “Re: When Chad Is a Dad”, “Re: Your Random Profile”, and “Re: The Male Ego”. I think Kate Baer says it best at the end of the introduction to the book “My hope is that by sharing these pieces we continue to hold on to the truths that sustain us, and when we do encounter the inevitable noise-we tune our ears to hear the song.” -Jenny L.

[Brittney · Rating 5 out of 5]

These erasure poems are so satisfying. Sometimes a rebuttal, sometimes an insight, always a delight. I'll admit I was skeptical of the premise because I don't love internet trolls, but yet again, faith in Kate Baer paid off.

Old favorite
Re: When Chad is a Dad

New favorite
Re: Sodom and Gomorrah from Isaiah 1:9, 15-17

[Natalie Park · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this collection! The idea of taking emails and posts, many of them critical and at times hateful, into poetry,must have been cathartic. The poetry ranges from humorous to poignant to heartbreaking.

[literaryelise · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. I like the concept and I do think there were some interesting pages, I just balk a bit at calling it poetry. Doesn’t utilize the form, style, devices, etc of poetry or include anything recognizably poetic. Enjoyed it more than her other book though.

[Alicia Bayer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was not familiar with Kate Baer before reading this book but she's apparently fairly well known and has written a number of books of what she calls erasure poems (basically just a different take on black out poetry). She uses comments on news articles, spam letters and letters from readers to isolate just a few words and create poems from them on topics like women's bodies, LGBTQ issues and other social and personal issues. Many of the letters are negative, trollish and mean. She transforms them very well. Recommended for adults and teens, and also in the classroom.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.

[Rod Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kate Baer slaps back at her internet trolls by finding some mic-drop responses hidden amongst the words of their own diatribes. This clever turn is called erasure poetry, though I seem to recall Mad magazine doing something similar in their pages with political statements and advertisements back when I was a kid.

Baer also tries the same trick with positive comments -- drawing out affirmations -- and from other sources to lesser success. It has the most emotional impact for me when in direct response to her haters.

Slim book, quick read.

[Basic B's Guide · Rating 5 out of 5]

When you turn the last page and want to start all over again.

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Kate literary turns crap (from nasty internet trolls) into wine and I’m here for it. She had me doubling over in laughter, nodding my head in agreement and also heavy hearted at the world we live in.

Not into poetry? I beg to differ. 😉 Give Kate a try. Be sure to check out her IG feed where she shares quite a bit of her poetry.

Buy her books. One for you, all your sisters and friends too.

[chantel nouseforaname · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kate Baer is a real one.

It hurt me that people can be that toxic and believe in the madness they’re posting. She ended it on an incredible note with the last poem, Re: My Daughter’s Struggles. Heavy.

The violence that women have to deal online and IRL on the day-to-day enrages me. The internalized sexism, misogyny of some of the commenters is doubly heartbreaking. I love that she flipped all this toxicity into something else.

Kate Baer is doing the higher power’s work!

[Deborah · Rating 5 out of 5]

As Kate became more popular on the internet, responses ranging from advice to rants inspired her to transform them into poetry of “light and hope” instead of blocking and deleting them. She turned dark into light, cruelty into beauty, and criticisms into gratitude. Using these messages and words from public figures, her redactions cleverly demonstrate the power of words. You can create poetry from anything.

[Amanda Hupe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you, Harper Perennial and Kate Baer for the opportunity to read this book. It releases on November 9th, 2021!

Last year I read Kate Baer’s What Kind of Woman and it was an experience, I felt understood. That continues on in this unique collection entitled I Hope This Finds You Well. In this collection, Kate Baer takes comments from her blog, news articles and uses erasure to turn them into inspiration and something beautiful. These topics vary from politics, equality, oppression, feminism, the preying nature of MLMs, the constant critique of our bodies, etc…

Here are a few examples:

1) Re: Women in the White House is a comment she received about how we can’t only use gender as a criterion for leadership and how we need to respect the “family structure” of women being in the home and that we need to acknowledge our limits and boundaries in certain fields.

Kate Baer’s poetic transformation of the message:

“I have seen women love this country
while suffering from its persecution
Who better to lead us into the coming days”

2) Re: Your Mommy Pouch is a message received asking the author to try a new detox tea. It discusses that as mothers we need to lose the baby fat, or the COVID 15 in order to love ourselves more.

Kate Baer’s response:

“I hope this finds you
leaning towards a life
intent on love”

3) Re: My Black Friend is a message from a blog reader who has always enjoyed her blogs but was especially disturbed by her comments in support of the Black Lives Matter Movement. She insists she is not racist and has MANY Black friends and coworkers but refuses to see color.

Kate Baer’s response:

“I hope this finds you
searching for every voice
you have clearly erased.”

Her making poetry out of the comments she received is just utterly powerful. She never responds in anger but in truth. These works are relatable and emotional. She draws from the experiences we all have and the hurtful words that have been thrown at us. Some responses are rather humorous, but many are heartbreaking and powerful. I rate this book 5 out of 5 stars!

[Kira DeSomma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I work at an indie bookstore and we received an uncorrected proof copy of this book for review. I did not read Kate Baer’s “What Kind of Woman” but I devoured this book of ferociously uplifting and cleverly resourceful poems. I will be recommending this book to any and all poetry readers. What a moving and magical transformation Baer has made, shifting the power and agency away from internet trolls and back into her own hands! In a world of anonymous hate that promises it’s “nothing personal”, Baer creates a catharsis of very intensely personal and emotional womanhood. Absolutely triumphant. Bravo.

[Hannah B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

✨”I hope this finds you leaning towards a life intent on love.”✨

The concept was cool and unique and some of those emails made my blood BOIL! As for the poems, I bookmarked a few but not a lot of them spoke to me. Love the cover though like damn!! Go off! Also the title is PERFECT.

The description did make it seem like she was sent all the comments, emails, etc but some were just from news articles or interviews. That doesn’t really detract but I was a bit confused.

I can’t tell if I wanted this to be longer or a bit shorter . . . I suppose longer in the chance I find more bookmark-and-hang-on-the-fridge type poems.

✨”You don’t have to lose yourself to find some secret happiness there is so much more to life than this.”

✨I also just loved the one where she just said “read a book.”

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy for review! All opinions are honest and my own.

[Kerry (lines i underline) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5⭐️ This collection is often clever and provocative and makes you think and feel. Sometimes Baer’s offerings feel like poems, and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they feel too much like direct statements to meet my definition or understanding of what a poem is.

But I love the concept and philosophy behind these pieces, and several of them struck me as beautiful and memorable. Also, I am here for the idea of inviting more people to the poetry party. Poetry should be accessible because it hasn’t been for way too long.

My favourite:

I hope this finds you
leaning
towards a
life
intent
on
love

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

The concept is unique, turning criticism into poetry, and not just poetry but poetry that speaks to women kindly and lovingly. I am full of admiration for what Kate Baer did and absolutely loved this book!. I also am looking at my review and wonder how she would reword it? I am giving my daughter a copy of this book!

[Rachael Fryman · Rating 5 out of 5]

*Highly Recommend*

One Sentence Summary: Baer takes comments/emails/messages sent to her and creates a response through a found/erasure poem and it's brilliant!

Reminds Me Of: Feminist Shakespearean insults - always clever, sometimes humorous, and often flies right over the head of the target.

Three Reasons You Should Read This:
1) The style is so readable. I'm not big on poetry, but I LOVED this collection.
2) People who experience similar feedback on social media will be incensed at the negative original messages and vigorously nodding your head and Baer's poetic response.
3) Not all of the original messages are negative. Baer does a wonderful job responding to positive messages as well.

One Thing You Should Know Before You Pick This Up:
If you have a closed mind, you may not like this, but you should read it anyway.

Content Warnings: Body Shaming, Gaslighting, Homophobia, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Sexual Harassment, Transphobia

Favorite Quote:
to love yourself is to love the world and find a place to live in it (pg 57)

Soundtrack:
She - Marie Gallo

[Katharine · Rating 5 out of 5]

THIS BOOK. I devoured it in one sitting and every single poem made me feel something – they're funny and poignant and gutting and full of humanity. This would be the perfect gift for anyone, so I highly recommend picking up not just a copy for yourself, but a few extras too. If I could, I'd buy 100 copies and give one to every single person I came across. Just read it. And then read her previous collection, What Kind of Woman.

Thank you to Harper Perennial and Netgalley for providing me with a free review copy. All opinions are my own.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. I’m buying a copy for every person I know - I loved every second of this collection.

Thanks to the publisher for an advanced copy; effusive opinion and deep adoration all my own.

[Bonnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've never read Erasure/Blackout Poetry before, so this introduction was interesting.

For the most part, this collection was all about taking scathing comments/posts from individuals and taking their own words and turning them into something beautiful. Something different. It was compelling but only a few managed to pack an emotional punch.

[Sarah (sarahanneisreading) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a small collection of erasure poetry, created from mail Kate Baer has received (including spam mail, unsolicited advice, fan mail etc). She cleverly takes the usually hateful messages she has been sent and turns them into positive poems on the next page. The poems are truly empowering and humorous at times and it was a real pleasure to see so many negative messages turned into something beautiful by selecting certain words from the original message. It seemed like the perfect revenge.

This is a quick and easy read that can be finished in one sitting in less than an hour, with the collection only being 80 pages. I'm not someone that is very familiar with erasure poetry, but I truly appreciated this collection and I know I will be recommending it to friends and family in the future.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

[Sarah Piotrowicz · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful, witty little book! I had no idea what to expect when I started reading this on my Kindle and was delighted by the way Kate Baer creates uplifting poems out of anything, even hateful rhetoric (usually from men, but not always). This made me think a lot about the power of language to harm and heal, and it made me consider how I can use my words to protect and uplift women.

[grace!! · Rating 5 out of 5]

such a beautiful collection of poetry. Kate Baer creates her poems using nasty comments and messages she’s received on social media and has made them into uplifting, inspiring, true pieces of art. I read this in one sitting and I recommend it to everyone.