I absolutely love Neil Hilborn’s writing. I preordered this one before seeing him live and was tired of waiting for it when I saw this available on Netgalley. Neil was incredible live and his poems do not disappoint. I loved all of them and can not wait for the next book.

I have loved Neil's work for years and I went through a phase where I listen to his spoken word album like it's music. I was a bit anxious going into this collection and it got off to a bit of a rocky start for me, but then there were a few poems (such as "For Henry, Who Has Just Gone") where my emotions flooded out of me. I don't think I have ever cried this often while reading a poetry collection. Not to mention the two "Psalm 12" poems which actually made me laugh out loud. There were several poems that I didn't enjoy as much, but as a whole, any poetry collection that can make me laugh while tears are still running down my cheeks is good to me.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of the collection in exchange for an honest review!

I didn’t enjoy this. I have heard great things about Neil’s work and was expecting to like it way more than I did. There were definitely a few I enjoyed, but sadly most I did not. I feel like these would have been so much better performed! Like this book should have come with all them spoken and it would have had a bigger impact on me. But most just fell flat. I was also confused so much! I felt like so many of these just didn’t make sense. They either went over my head or I couldn’t get the overall message behind most of them. It just felt like I was reading sentences that had nothing to do with each other. Again, I would probably enjoy watching his performances but I can’t recommend this in written form as I was either confused or just didn’t care for the poem.

This collection is not your happy-go-lucky bunch of words.
It's got grit and I found some poems as nostalgic as they were sentimental. There's a serving of sarcasm in between some lines too and this reminded me of something my Literature Professor used to say "If you don't get it the first time, read it a second time and if you don't get it then, try the third, after that well, blame the gods of literature for not bestowing understanding on you."
Thank you NetGalley for the eARC.

1..5 Stars

While there were some good lines here and there, I didn’t connect with any of the poems and many of them seemed silly although I’m not sure that was the intention.

Mistakenly listed as 'humor' (sic), downloaded and rated as such.