Sabrina Benaim is a performance poet popular on Youtube, and I had heard of her poem she wrote to explain her experience with depression to her mother. This collection included that poem and many others about Sabrina's experiences. Beautifully and poignantly written, every poem is deeply personal.

Thank you to Sabrina Benaim for bravely and eloquently sharing her experiences, and to the publisher and Netgalley, for the opportunity to read this collection fo poetry.

The legendary Sabrina Benaim manages to strike me straight in the heart. Again. After finding this book on Goodreads, I read some reviews and to my luck, it's currently on Netgalley! So much enthusiasm about a book about depression and living and life. I could very much stare at each of her poems and ponder over them forever. Everything is beautifully pieced together.

I couldn't help but go and rewatch her spoken word performances on Youtube after reading, and it's just mind-blowing word after word after word. What's so special about "Explaining My Depression to My Mother" is its pure rawness and emotion. The first time I watched her speak, I was so shocked and overwhelmed by how there was so much meaning in everything she said and so much relatability packed into a few minutes of poetry. I think I could listen to her poems for hours over and over again without blinking an eye.

Words. Are. So. Powerful.

Sabrina's talent for stringing words together is unbelievable. Every single word is real and honest. Some of which are painfully so. Her work is the type that you read and have to pause at, because wow ,someone put it in words. It's beautiful.

"i wouldn't say i'm sensitive, i'm just highly susceptible to feeling a lot"

"the hollow auditorium of my chest swoons with echoes of a heartbeat, but i am a careless tourist here"

"i held hands with my sadness, sang it songs in the shower, fed it lunch, got it drunk & put it to bed early"

It's nice to get a reminder that you aren't completely alone in the world, and I love her for that.

Sending my love to Netgalley and Button Poetry for this gem. I'm still getting chills.

Depression & Other Magic Tricks was composed of poems that were mostly about depression but also about love, etc.

I liked how the poems were told. I also found them to be very touching and relatable.
It was pretty short but I still enjoyed it.

I don't read much modern poetry, but as someone with depression, I was quite drawn to the title of this collection. Benaim's collection is about her experiences with depression in several poems. I felt like it was very true and from the heart and for the most part I liked the poems. Some poems definitely resonated with me more than others - the romantic ones I didn't connect with much, but the ones about sadness and loneliness I felt in my bones.

Benaim has a voice that so direct and frank yet beautifully poetic, which is something I don't see often and it works so well with this topic. I feel like this makes her poems very relatable, especially to fellow sufferers of depression, and I enjoyed reading this poetry collection.

I really don't have any actual opinions on this. If I had one word to describe this collection it would just be meh.

A collection of poems about depression and mental health. This is the first time i have read a book of poetry about this subject, but as s sufferer myself i was eager to read it. I read the book in one sitting, enjoying some poems more than others. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this in return for an honest review.

*I received this book from NetGally in exchange for an honest review.

If you struggle with depression or know someone who does, this book is for you! I was aware of Benaim through some of her performance poetry videos and she has somehow given the same amazingly real voice to the struggle with depression in this book. Benaim writes beautifully and truthfully from her soul. I am definitely recommending this book and am planning on buying a hardcopy for myself even though I already have an ebook of it!

Overall, this book is just an okay read for me but Sabrina Benaim did manage to hit me in the gut a few times especially with 'explaining my depression to my mother', which resonated with me. 'follow-up a prayer / a spell' is another piece that is basically written for me / about me, and so is 'seven small ways in which i loved myself this week'.

Really a mixed bag; I did enjoy the different types of poetry presented in this collection but a lot of the times they feel either neutrally or completely flat.

A Carefully Crafted Collection

This book ended too soon. I was so completely caught up in Benaim's word choice, her natural story telling prose. Every line provoked an emotion, a thought, but most often a fleeting memory. It was art. As a Button Poetry fan, I had already heard of Sabrina Benaim from her performance of "Explaining my depression to my mother" (which is included in this book). This was the reason I chose to read this book, I had found that incredibly intense. I loved it, just as I did this book.

Depression & Other Magic Tricks is for anyone who has been feeling lonely, or finding it more difficult to get out of bed recently, or perhaps suffering from depression themselves... Not all of it made sense to me, but a part of me always understood. Sabrina Benaim's words cover anything from lost love, making sense of love, bitter heartache and the sweet feelings of nostalgia. I especially related to her yearning to be able to control her emotions, but then wanting others to see how she truly felt when she didn't have the words to simply say. As well as her joy when she woke to the feeling that today would be a good day. That feeling is so very underrated. Then there was the poem "Girl behind you" which as a short woman, I could completely understand.

Benaim's writing reminded me how much I enjoyed listening to spoken word, the stories performed so emotively. I just loved the retrospective nature of her writing, as though those feelings really were both in the past and the present. This is a lovely collection.

I received this book through NetGalley.

I read this book in one sitting, even when I hadn't planned on reading much at all. I was just going to read a poem or two to see how I felt about the book. I was sucked right in. The poems are touching, heartbreaking, and hard to read at times, because I relate to them so much. The poem about explaining depression to your mother really resonated with me.

The writing style is different if you do not read a lot of poetry. I could feel the emotion and pain behind the words, even for the poems I could not personally understand.

Beautifully written.

Mixed feelings about this one. Some of the poetry was beautiful and relatable, but some of it was more mediocre and repetitive. I had higher expectations of this collection. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Absolutely beautiful. So raw and emotional, I absolutely loved it. Can't recommend it enough.

I had such high hopes, because I loved "Explaining Depression to my Mother". But this poetry book was such a dissapointment in my opinion. I didn't connect with any other poem, so this book didn't meet my high expectations at all.

This book isn't memorable at all and I didn't like it.

This poetry collection is witty and sharp and sort of spiky. Each piece packs a punch; some leave you reeling, others help you back up again afterwards. Of course depression is different for everyone, but Benaim’s impressive articulation of her experiences rang true for me.

'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 collection as a whole follows a beautiful arc. Her tone, at times angry, at times frustrated, at times sarcastic, veers away from defeatism, and climbs towards something that feels more determined. I loved the poem 'Seven small ways in which I loved myself this week' for its smallness and simultaneous bigness.

And ultimately, the final lines come as an affirmation, a sign to move forwards, and leave you feeling energised.

I exhale/ & I begin

DEPRESSION & OTHER MAGIC TRICKS is a raw, honest depiction of a young girl's struggle with depression and the ways love intersects with mental illness. The poetry was a good mix of prose and verse, short and long, with enough variety that even if you didn't like one style, there were plenty of other styles to read. The simplicity of everyday life with a mental illness is the strongest aspect of the volume of poetry, and what I best related to.

Though some of the poems felt like they would be best spoken, not written, and the length could be long, each poem was bubbling with emotion and heartache. I'd recommend this to people in the process of healing, from either depression or love gone wrong.

After seeing a few of Sabrina Benaim's slam poetry performances on YouTube, I was extremely excited to get a copy of this book through NetGalley. Having extreme depression and anxiety myself, I was eager to find some pieces of poetry I could heavily relate to. Unfortunately I was pretty disappointed with this collection. A majority of the works were focused on a failed relationship instead of mental illness. I've been through my fair share of hard break ups and, for whatever reason, I still had a difficult time relating to those pieces. Maybe it's because relationship poetry wasn't really what I thought this collection would focus on so I wasn't in the mood or prepared for it. There were a few pieces that I really related to and loved which is why I'm still giving three stars. It isn't bad poetry by ANY means, it's just clear that Sabrina Benaim and I personally deal with our mental illnesses differently so it was hard for me to relate. I've heard some people also had difficulty relating while others bawled their eyes out the entire time, so it's definitely personal preference with this poetry collection.

This is a wonderful collection. I loved the poet's way with words. There are times when you feel something but don't know how to express it. You may not know how to explain your thoughts to others because you can't find the right words or the closest metaphor. Sabrina Benaim nails such emotions and views with beautiful imagery.

Sometimes, you may be confused about your own feelings and books can help you process them and understand yourself. That is what this poetry collection did to me. Part of it was relatable. Part of it was moving. All of it was beautiful. Highly recommended.

Benaim's Depression and Other Magic Tricks is a well thought collection of her poems. Most of the poems revolve around her own life, love and hardships and she managed to avoid sounding artsy, which is awesome. Especially I enjoyed that love wasn't the main theme in a romantic way, but more like wanting to let go and starting anew. We get to enter inside the head of the poet and Benaim chooses her words carefully. She uses expressions that open up new doors to the poems and many times I was astonished how much it matters how you say stuff, compare them and how to represent them even if their nature is simple.

Depression and Other Magic Tricks is a whole collection with a story in it and at the same time there isn't one. It makes us interpret it and see things how we want to without giving the interpretation fully to us. The poems are meaningful, witty and funny even at times and at the same time they tell about the world more than we could imagine. I liked the rhythm and how everything was constructed without being too cryptic still. I highly recommend to try this.