Sex Depression Animals: Poems

by Mag Gabbert

In SEX DEPRESSION ANIMALS, Mag Gabbert redefines the bestiary in fiery, insistent, and resistant terms. These poems recast the traumas of her adolescence while charting new paths toward linguistic and bodily autonomy as an adult. Using dreamlike, shimmering imagery, she pieces together a fractured portrait of femininity—one that electrifies the confessional mode with its formal play and rich curiosity. Gabbert examines the origin of shame, the role of inheritance, and what counts as a myth, asking, “What’s the opposite of a man? / A woman? A wound? The devil’s image?”

Genres: Poetry

94 pages, Paperback

First published March 13, 2023

Reviews

[Ten Cats Reading · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to the author, Mag Gabbert, and publishers Mad Creek Books and The Ohio State University Press, for the advance reader copy of SEX DEPRESSION ANIMALS.

Favorite poem: "Rhinoceros"
Favorite section: Section II
Favorite lines:
Jonah called the sea the realm
of the dead the depths of hell the belly
for thou hast cast me into the deep
I close my eyes and swallow hard

and thy floods and thy waves pass over me
the taste is salted briny
my throat textured
like the grout under my knees
From "Toilet" (7)

I really love a poetry collection that doesn't give up all its secrets on the first read, read and a half, and that's SEX DEPRESSION ANIMALS. It took me a while, but I figured out the brilliant puzzle Gabbert built into the form and title. These poems take a little participation on the reader's part to feret out interpretation, especially in Section III where the form experiment is so bold.

Second collection this week I've loved for style! What I love most about SEX DEPRESSION ANIMALS is that all through the collection, in many of the poems, if the reader reads closely, they will find brilliant little linguistic games. In "Rhinoceros," Gabbert writes, "I once mistook / the word blubbery / for blueberry" (69). All of "Egg" is filled with these wonderful word games. In "June," she writes to "the dead person / that my tendons / are threads of pain" (41). In "Fever" (40) she repeats the line, "I need a tissue" again and again; tissues are common needs when one is sick and has a fever and is also a symbol for a consolation prize, she needs to be consoled, she has lost something, someone. Make no mistake-- this poetry is smart.

I recommend SEX DEPRESSION ANIMALS for poetry lovers and poets of any experience level, though for sure the more time you spend with it, the more secrets you will unlock.

Rating 🦏🦏🦏🦏🦏 / 5 Rhinoceros
Recommend? Such good poetry!
Finished: February 28 2023
Read this if you like:
🌃 Contemporary poetry
🪨 Abstract poetry
🪢 Linguistic games
🗣 Lyric poetry

[Amorak Huey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intense & impressive.

[Madeline Augusta Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

mag is incredible!! this book is wholly brilliant & it is one of those things you read that reads you too, fills you and then fills you again when you think about it later

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Provocative and smart. Thank you, Mag Gabbert. You have inspired me.

[Carly Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exploration of the self, animals, and language's ability to twist and turn around its origins -- a book I'll be recommending to many students and friends over the possibility to "say the thing" in a way that sings (zings!) across the page.

[victoria marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

maybe we find ships Romantic because that word is both a noun and a verb (5)

*

When my grandmother had run out of language, I folded a handful of stars as a gift for her, and she just swallowed them. (7)

*

I am consumed by violent stillness—that you do not reach for me. That you are not that kind of man, but could have been (9)

*

Lace a piece of cord used to bind or close openings / the satin corset I wore to a frat party / flimsy stitches / paper snowflakes / trimmed skirted legs / a man leaning / in whispering do you shave everything / the root is shared with Old French for ribbon or string / with Latin for snare / with English lasso / some men I know / still like playing games / like pickup / linked elbows / plastic cups / arranged in shiny bouquets / like every lip touching / so it’s easy to aim / drinks all mixed up / eyes blackened blurry / shadows / sheets / in the 1590s to be laced meant beaten / or lashed as in patterns on skin / a placeholder for feminine / as in frilly / undone easily / do I have to say please / ripped panties / the seeds / of Queen Anne’s Lace / eaten to prevent pregnancy / every man who’s ever asked me / do you want it / plucked petals on a daisy / every pain I could’ve named / avoided / every time I said yes I did (15)

*

it’s true that I call you an old flame even though I still reach across the dark (18)

*

I love knowing that some species of moths live off the tears of larger animals that no two lions share the same pattern of whiskers (20)

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I used to want to let a cheetah eat me as a demonstration of how much I loved them (21)

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technically pink isn’t a color but an illusion we perceive by mixing the two light spectrum extremes (24)

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Always this space between the person we are and the person we want to be. (27)

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I knew that darkness could make everything seem closer or else disappear (38)

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I don’t recommend mistaking everything for love but it’s been interesting.—Alex Dimitrov (69)

*

“Goat” (a fave poem, on starting on page 73)

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Because every choice I’ve made involved sacrifice. Because I’m always the one that got away.
(74)

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Become good at losing what you never had. (77)


[lucky enough to know this amazing poet & this collection is so engagingly INCREDIBLE. highly recommend!]

[✵ Kas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Raw, confessional & clever. Explores heavy things like grief / violence / sexual objectification / trauma & coming of age. Really enjoyed the play with words and form (poems in bullet points and poems scattered all over the page etc), and inspiration drawn from other sources like Y.B Yeats and Shakespeare.

One of my favourite lines from Satellite:

'you would say let's just see
where things lead
then my body would
become a satellite or stream
the way the sun beams
off the face of the moon
as they rotate apart.'

Pigeon was a fave too, if not jarring and sad. The language is beautiful. The lines:

'The first truck grazed him and the force
gifted him back to the air, wings splayed
seeking or accepting a current, it was celebratory,
almost, busted pillow, confetti bomb, flecks of a silver
pinata- what was the abstraction I wanted?'

Really engaged with this collection. I do enjoy (is that the right word) poetry written by wounded poets, i feel something of a connection.

[Aether · Rating 5 out of 5]

took me awhile to start this and finish it but truly i waited for the right time to read this book. it gave me some new inspirations but also i could connect to parts of it better than i could earlier this year. mag is incredible with making descriptions so crisp and spectacular. the two that are sticking in my head right now is a description of fingers being shut in a door as pressed flowers, and a silence described as the silence as when you swallow your own spit. also the language detail in this book- mag brings up variant words, root words, homonyms to amplify descriptions and emotions and its absolutely stunning. what a gorgeous gorgeously written book.

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning! Sex and violence and pain and animals and weird body stuff and dry wit. This was the poetry collection I didn’t know I needed. Lace, Figment, Oyster, Rabbit, Bat, Crack were all just breathtaking. There’s a sense I got of repeated attempts or circling difficult material, building and complicating and challenging a thing, or iterating. A gesture I love in poetry and wish I saw in prose more often.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this collection, which is smart and experimental in great ways. The explorations of word roots and etymologies I like, and the erasures and Biblical allusions are rewarding. My favorite poem is the very clever abecedarian “Blue,” which I reread several times. I didn’t need a few of the poems, which seemed to repeat some themes or reuse a mechanism employed better elsewhere, but almost everything is very good, and I’m a Gabbert fan. A very worthy Dallas poet laureate.

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exactly the book I needed to read just now. This is an absolutely gorgeous first collection, so smart and charming, at times intensely vulnerable and equally resilient. This is a collection I will come back to again and again. Looking forward to many more books from this powerhouse poet.

[Emma Goldman-Sherman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. I found it to be an exhilarating read. I wanted more in the 3rd section, but wanting more is not a criticism. The language is precise and raw. The truth exists in these pages in ways that make Gabbert's work both daring and dominant over the experiences recounted. Masterful.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this collection, excellent and inventive.

[Eben]

A jagged scalpel that tells jokes out of the dictionary while it cuts you

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's not often that poetry books surprise and delight me (well, and/or horrify me depending on what the poem is trying to do). I'm adding Mag Gabbert to my must read whatever they put out next list.

[Ashley Grins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mag Gabbert I love you!!!! Thank you for creating breakup poems!!

[Lilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

sex violence pain and animals = worth your time. Go read Goat by Gabbert in the Journalmag if nothing else

[Wendy! · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was interesting

[Liz Pagett · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourite poets. I have bought everything she’s ever published and will continue to do so!

[Connie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spanning five parts, Mag Gabbert’s breathtaking debut collection delves into breakups, desire, fauna, grandmother-love, and language. On my first read, I, Post-its en route, smattered earlier margins with hearts. One next to “water which is often called a body at one point gets broken or is broken against” in “Blue.” After poring over hearts, I reread dog-eared pages and purple sticky-flagged sections. With heavy eyelids, I reread a stanza from “Bone”: “Somewhere the wings / of a resting monarch / close and open like eyelids.” And like that, my week of poetry plus a Monday ends.

from “Reading Poetry and Only Poetry for a Week” via BOOK RIOT: https://bookriot.com/reading-only-poe...

[crista · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am consumed
by violent stillness—

[Jean device · Rating 2 out of 5]

Heterosexual