Things I Didn't Do with This Body

by Amanda Gunn

Told in six parts, Things I Didn’t Do with This Body sings in myriad voices and forms—ragged columns rich with syncopated internal rhyme, crisp formal sonnets, and the angular shapes of a stream-of-pill-induced-consciousness.
Bedecked in Fenty and Shalimar, Amanda Gunn’s startling debut, Things I Didn’t Do with This Body , invites you to read with all of your senses and gives fresh meaning to the phrase a body of work. Told in six parts, this collection sings in myriad voices and forms—ragged columns rich with syncopated internal rhyme, crisp formal sonnets, and the angular shapes of a stream-of-pill-induced-consciousness. Both tender and emotionally raw, these poems interweave explorations of family and interrogations of history, including an unforgettable sequence that meditates on the life of Harriet Tubman. With Tubman’s portrait perched above her writing desk, Gunn pens poems that migrate from South to North, from elegy to prayer, from borrowed shame to self-acceptance.  Writing with frankness and honesty, Gunn finds no thought, no memory, too a father’s verbal blow, a tense visit to a gynecologist’s table, the longing to be “erased/by a taxi at 50 miles an hour,” and grief at the loss of two former lovers, decades apart. Death is familiar here, yet we find softness, grace, and hope in the culinary lessons learned in warm family kitchens, in the communal laughter of a rehab center’s common room, and in the rewards and pleasures of the fat erotic. With poems as malleable as the skin that “misplaced one hundred nine pounds” and filled it again, Gunn proves that, for the Black body, memory often presents the heaviest weight. Things I Didn’t Do with This Body is a reminder that “carried in the body is the future, the present, and the past.” The most capable thing a body can do is remember and bear it and live.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

Published May 23, 2023

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️'s

[E · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was so underwhelmed by this book. I was really hopeful about this book, especially considering the largely-fantastic reviews it gets here on Goodreads. But it didn't take long before I realized that all the wonderful things people gushed about in their own reviews couldn't have been more different from my own experience.

(For quick background, I do read--and write--quite a bit of poetry. I'm not a huge fan of poetry that rhymes in really obvious ways; that tends to be a huge turn-off for me as a reader.)

While I did find some lines I really enjoyed, by and large, I found the obvious rhymes annoying and distracting; they overtook my ability to really sink into the language as I hope to do whenever I read poetry. Unfortunately, I never felt like I was truly pulled into this book or any of the poems. I will also note that, because of that, the reading experience didn't feel particularly pleasant, hence why it took nearly a week to read 100 pages.

[Leonard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent debut from this poet. It's mentioned as one of the outstanding works from new poets in the latest issue of Poets and Writers Magazine. These diverse poems can be described as raw, rich, and intriguing. Each turn of the page provides the poetry lover with something fresh, thoughtful, and rewarding. This is one of those rare books that the reader wants to start reading again as soon as he reaches the last page. A good collection of poems to start the New Year.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I try not to ask what you'd ask at a cocktail/party. No 'What do you do for a living?' knowing/ how a living can be dissolved in the flood and how those things don't matter here anyway./There's only what makes a person that signifies,/the chemicals down in the cells, the tissue/ of feeling and memory."

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rolled up to 4 - I struggled with the structure of many of these poems, i just couldn't get into the rhythm of the lines or their arrangement or something. But there's a central chunk of poems about grief and mental illness that are STUNNING in their imagery. Absolutely worth reading.

[Alana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heartbreaking, but also hopeful. A couple of the sections were more of a stream-of-consciousness word vomit, but that was kind of the point of that part of the grief and depression process. Difficult to read, but valuable.

[Skylar Miklus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inspired, shocking, revelatory. Each suite of poems is tightly constructed and marvelously successful. Amanda Gunn is a voice to watch in modern poetics.

[Laura Sackton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely stunning. The rhyme. The sonnets. The poem about eggs and all the food poems. Every poem. The range of forms. I am floored.

[Chantelle Vancooten · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gunn has a remarkable ability to articulate her reader's innermost thoughts and emotions with her words. Her work takes the reader on a captivating historical journey through her family lineage.

[Malia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

"This thing I wear that looks like grace or reserve or taste but sits on my skin like a stain of a sin, this thing I bear but cannot name, it may be this-a borrowed shame."

[Connie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meditating on kitchens and perfume, grief and romance novels, and family and memory, I found Gunn’s debut collection luminous. Comprised of six parts, visit these pages to fall in love with phrases, lines, poems, entire sections, the poet’s work. The opening sentence of “Notes on a Dream of Dying” introduced my jaw to the floor, “I know this dream like the lines of my hand.” Throughout the book, the mentions of food and the care involved in the preparation of dishes like “a pot of stuffed cabbage,” “graham / cracker cake,” and “paprikás” are all chef’s kiss.

from “Recent Poetry Releases to Add to Your Collections in Anticipation of The Sealey Challenge” via BOOK RIOT: https://bookriot.com/new-poetry-2023/