These poems were quite good. I liked the diversity of the collection and I liked its honesty. I would buy Sabrina's next book - just to see how she's evolving.

While Benaim's voice is raw and real, some of her poems fell flat to me. Many broke my heart and made me cry, while I couldn't connect with others at all. It was a mixed bag of some great pieces and some others that simply didn't reach me.
Her work continues to intrigue me and I will keep an eye out for her future work, but I may not be as invested in it.

I have a weird relationship with poetry. I loved and so strongly related to some of the poems and others went over my head. Worth reading if you have depression, though. And you should absolutely look up her performing poems.

I was not entirely sure how to describe this book. First of all it took me a lot of time to read it, because I felt very moved by it. I apologize for how late I am to it.

I can only say that this book was extremely emotive, It moved me so so much and I found it to be beautiful.

I sometimes can't explain why poetry books speak to me so much, but this one touched me on a very deep level. It's really worth the read.

I've been a very big fan of the videos of Sabrina I've witnessed over the years, so I began already knowing how adept she is at describing the topsy-turvey emotional whirlwind that is suffering from depression in a succinct yet cutting way. Reading her work adds a new level of intimacy than there is watching er preform, but I urge everyone who has read or is thinking about reading to look her up!
But as for the poems - there's essentially two themes running underneath this collection, and I think the work is stronger - or at least resonates more deeply with me - when she is talking about her mental illness, rather than her lost love & heartbreak. Still! It's a moving and beautiful series.
Stand-outs include: the loneliest sweet potato, so my friend tells me she identifies as a mermaid..., poems from the beach trip, & the slow now.

Review link to be added once review has been edited and published.

Thank you to NetGalley and Button Poetry for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Depression & Other Magic Tricks is the debut book by Sabrina Benaim, it explores themes of mental health, love, and family .I was really hoping to love this collection but sadly i found it to be a little underwhelming. There were some poems that I really did enjoy. The poems about depression felt very personal and I applaud the author for expressing her feelings, as it must be hard to share something like that with the world. Other poems felt like they were just there to fill up space. If your looking for a short quick poetry collection then pick this one up.

Favorite Poems:
+explaining my depression to my mother a conversation +so my friend tells me she identifies as a mermaid...

I loved this book! Struggling with depression and Anxiety myself, her
book was easy to read and something I could relate to. This book is
a treasure, one that I would feel good about giving to a friend as a gift!

I truly believe that the poetry Benaim writes is the type that should be read aloud. I couldn't figure out how her premiere poem, "First Date" was supposed to be read, so I found a video of her performing it on YouTube and from there I knew what voice she was trying to use. Now, certainly, I don't use that against her by any means. After all, the ancient Greeks designed poetry to be spoken, not read.

Although I haven't been diagnosed with depression, I've been in those days where you just cannot find the ability to leave your bed and it feels like no one is there to help you. I appreciate the voice that Benaim gives to this illness. Some of the poems are also incredibly personal as she speaks of past loves and her relationships with her parents, and I love the open honesty that she weaves into her poems. I hope she continues to write, perform, and publish more poems because these were enjoyable yet important reads.

Sabrina Benaim surprised me with her poem "Explaining my depression to my mother" and her Youtube video of it totally showed the emotions and intensity of this poem. Although I loved this poem, I can't say that I liked all the poems in the book. My favorite poems were the ones that talked about depression and mental health because I think is so important to learn about this topics by people who has passed through this problems. I could relate with her easily and find her voice in those. But, I didn't like the ones that talked about romance and breakups because they had a lot of metaphors kind of difficult to understand. So, I spent most of the time trying to understand them "completely" or trying to find why would she write about that or whom it was dedicated to. Overall, it was a good read.

A few poems really resonated with me but for the most part they didn't make much sense. I found it hard to follow and understand the meaning of a lot of the poems. Overall, though, I thought it was good but I'm not about to run and get myself a hard copy.

I have never seen any of Sabrina Benaim’s performances before but I will definitively be checking them out now. I loved her poetry collection. It was raw and emotional covering a range of topics from mental illness to dealing with break ups to the importance of self care. Her writing was beautiful and funny. I especially like her poem “So My Friend Tells Me She Identifies as a Mermaid...” which starts off so hysterically funny and then suddenly switches to such deep emotion I was caught off guard by it. Her letters to Beyoncé are also particularly special. This is the poetry collection people should be shouting about! Sabrina deserves to go viral again.

Thank you to Netgalley and the author for the advanced copy!

This collection of poems really captured what it is like to live with depression. The author really captured how isolating this disorder can feel at times. Thank you again!

I picked this up being totally unfamiliar with this poet or her work, but hey, the collection had a catchy title and reading/hearing/learning about mental illness is something that is important to me, so the fact that at least some of the poetry was going to deal with depression-- but in a way that was sarcastic-- so it seemed like it would be worth my time.
To say I loved this collection would be an understatement. This is one of the most cohesive poetry collections I've ever read in terms of through-threads of theme and experiences, and one of the very best I've read to boot. Benaim's imagery is beautiful, unique, startling, and ingenious. The way she lays out the words on the page is excellent, done with a skillful eye that begins approaching the genius of e.e. cummings.
And from the acknowledgments I have learned that Benaim is best known for her spoken word poetry, with millions of views online. Sounds like I have some YouTubing to do, now.

Review to be posted on mid-December, I will update the links to my blog, Twitter, etc then.

I had read that this book was a collection of poems about depression, love and heartbreak, and normally I don't love poetry much, so I hesitated for a long time before getting it. Still, I'd forgotten it was a poem collection when I got this book in Netgalley, and the first poem threw me off: I'm not a fan of modern-looking poems which read like a stream of thoughts, stressful and not entirely constructed to make sense to a reader outside of the author's head. So I glared a bit at the book and mentally scowled at myself for having gotten it. Then I kept turning pages.
And turning pages, and turning pages. The poems changed and, while the first is still my least favorite one, I started to enjoy them. Sabrina speaks in soft, quiet verses, stirring your emotions ever so slowly. My heart broke at her poem "explaining depression to my mother".

mom,
my depression is a shape shifter;
one day it is as small as a firefly in the palm of a bear,
the next, it's the bear.
those days i play dead until the bear leaves me alone.

The truth in these verses hit me like a soft-spoken acknowledgement. From then on, this book and I understood each other a thousand times better, and I came to love this poem best, followed by untitled (i) and untitled (ii). I don't love the Beyoncé parts, but that's okay. The poems in the middle of the book are my favorites, and I feel the urge to buy this to read more quietly and patiently.

I wanted to make these poems last, and I wanted to devour them. So I took several breaks to ponder and listen to instrumental music, and even then the book didn't take more than half an afternoon to read.

This book has a sadness to it, but it's not inherently sad itself. It's just very emotional.

I don’t remember the first time I saw Sabrina Benaim’s “Explaining My Depression to My Mother”. The YouTube video is date-stamped with the year 2014, and back then I watched a lot of poetry performances when my life felt particularly messy. Benaim’s stood out because of this line:

anxiety is the cousin visiting from out of town
depression felt obligated to bring to the party.
mom, i am the party.
only, i am a party i don’t want to be at.

#Relateable. Benaim’s personification of mental illness in this piece is incredible — the way she shakes, shouts, and talks to her unseen mother feels familiar in all the worst ways. It’s a piece I’ve seen shared time and time again on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. To this day, the full performance makes my stomach swoop.

So, when Benaim’s first book of poetry showed up on my recommended reads on NetGalley, I immediately clicked through, hoping for the same raw energy in her written work as she displays in her performance pieces. Depression & Other Magic Tricks boasts a lot of that same passion, though the translation of her work to text rather than speech sometimes leaves things to be desired.

From the book’s introduction, which plays with words and what they mean until Benaim circles back around to a simple “hello” to deep, aching pontifications on what it looks like to not get out of bed even on the mornings when you only hit the snooze button once, Depression digs deep into the emotions of someone who struggles daily with mental illness. It digs into parental relationships and romantic relationships and personal feelings of loss. It digs into trauma and all of its trappings while still remaining vague enough to push the reader into difficult, emotional places where we’re really able to sit with Benaim’s metaphors and experience them for ourselves.

our brains remember the infliction
of pain, be it physical, psychological, or emotional.
we remember this hurt as a means to avoid it in the future.
– “how to fold a memory”

Benaim’s writing in Depression & Other Magic Tricks is heavy, though it has moments where it borders on overwrought. The magnetism of her performance pieces doesn’t translate well to the page, which leaves some metaphors hanging in the balance. This is unfortunate, seeing as one of Benaim’s strongest skills is her ability to weave extended metaphors.

The run-on quality of her longer pieces (often presented as paragraphs, rather than line-by-line poems), in particular, evokes the panicked, breathless way she performed “Explaining My Depression to My Mother” in that 2014 video. Reading these pieces made me want to hear them in order to fully immerse myself in and understand them. The passion is there — but reading these pieces lacks the finesse of hearing them in Benaim’s own voice.

That being said, I still loved this book. I felt the same guttural tug reading Depression & Other Magic Tricks as I feel every time I watch Benaim perform. I just wanted more, and by more I mean performance. This poet’s words are not meant to be ingested in a book format. But I still think this is a solid read, and it makes me excited for what else Sabrina Benaim produces in the future.

Overall Rating: ★★★★☆
Recommended for: Everyone

I got this book to review a while back. The person who wrote this ( can't be called a poet, IMO) shot to fame thanks to spoken poetry. I had seen her performance once, and quite intrigued.
The book was such a let down that I just wish to go back in time and undo reading it.
I've shared a few shots of the writing in the book, and discussed it with a lot of friends. The book lacks basic grammar, and that is the most annoying part of it.
Some of the writing is good, not poetry, just good writing that is heartening.
Some people said this is how spoken poetry is. But elocution has been in practise since forever. Written poems were enacted and they were perfectly fine to read. Why then are these poems so badly structured?
This writing had great potential, I thought, perhaps- the writer meant to convey the mindset of someone who is depressed. Probably this is how muddled their thoughts are- that's the only explanation I have for this.

Reading Depression and Other Magic Tricks felt like I was reading Sabrina Benaim’s personal journal. It was an intimate experience, as I’ve never read an author write with such raw and honest emotion about depression. And with every poem I read, I grew more and more intrigued to read the next straight away.

I could relate to some of the poems, moments where her words went to my head and lingered around a bit, waiting to be digested. Reading along I could see many of her fears spill forward in her writing. The raw, emotional tone in her writing style makes for instant connection, especially if you are someone who has also dealt with depression and anxiety.

Quite a few of the poems stood out to me, such as “Seven Small Ways In Which I Loved Myself Today.” With “self-care” being a major buzzword lately, it was refreshing to read a realistic list of ways someone struggling with mental illness might attempt to use a self-care plan. Sometimes it’s all you can do to remind yourself to floss daily or eat sweets without getting on the scale afterwards. Though these things are not glorified nor glamorized, they are very much a part of self-care.

“Explaining Depression to My Mother” was easily my favorite poem of the collection. After hearing her perform it on YouTube, I felt like I had the wind knocked out of me. I had never heard depression spoken of in such a raw way. I was in awe, as I felt like there were finally words out there to fit the emotions I experience when anxious. Maybe her mom didn't understand, maybe she never will. But I did and I'm sure anyone else who has experienced depression and/or anxiety could relate.

This was a truly touching collection of poetry. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys modern poetry as well as those who can relate to the subject matter. I plan to recommend to friends and will be buying a physical copy for myself.

This has been my introduction to Sabrina Benaim and Button Poetry. I look forward to getting to know her better through her works as well as other poets from Button Poetry. I’ve been bingeing the YouTube channel and really enjoying what I’ve heard so far. Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with a copy of Depression and Other Magic Tricks for review.

it has some beautiful poems but as a whole i'm not much impressed by the poetic style.

Brave author! She shares her experience with depression and her mother issues in a creative way. Sublime