Thoroughly enjoyed Donish's poems here, especially the manner in which she challenges the notion of sexuality — but also the fragile nature of relations between men and women. I love how her verses carry on novel-like, endlessly and uninterrupted. Beautiful.

The Year of The Femme (2019) is a mindful and reflective collection of poetry that evokes and celebrates the feminine spirit. The poet, Cassie Donish is the recipient of the Iowa Poetry prize (2018) and this is her second collection following her poetry debut: Beautyberry (2018). Some of the poems contained in "Femme" have been previously published.

The memory of “open water” and “open sky” are reoccurring themes with earth, air, shoreline beaches, with many other natural elements and nature. There are several themes of observation and situations revealed in free style and alternative verse. “The Tower” is a powerful and alarming piece that may suggest an accident or suicide? An unnamed individual is found at the bottom of the ocean, Donish writes of “twisting herself into a blue/green rope”—a rope which was thrown down to save this person who was “willed” to climb up and implored to “please recover”. Haunted by image endings: “I repeat myself over and over/when time stops, each cell in my body will unlock/Each cell contains the same image: a face/The mount gapes open, but there is no sound. Nothing to defend.”
Without actually saying so, there seemed to be a thread of anxiety or mental anguish, lack of memory that occurred both before and after “The Tower” as well as the likelihood of psychiatric hospitalization: hospital technical staff, the waiting room, the largest hospital in an unnamed state. There was no mention of injury, accident; illness etc.
Attraction and desire take flight in several poems with only slight hints at lesbian love and physical lovemaking. We don’t really have enough details to fully understand “she” or unnamed events as Donish reveals a “mystery of thought” (and observation). Regarding her lover, Donish beckons her to follow her into Oregon, Washington and California.

“The Year of The Femme” was the closing poem beginning with swimming on a slow moving river, which turns into a meditative journey of awareness surrounded by the sheer force of the sea. Driftwood and sand dollars are perhaps symbolic of a gentle way of life enjoyed fully with her lover. “I’m in a neighborhood of mirrors, adolescent flowers, and the sound of footsteps. The question is how to travel, to cross to you.” In the spring, life begins fresh and anew in this thoroughly captivating collection of discovery, love and acceptance. ** With appreciation to the University of Iowa Press via NetGalley for providing a DDC for the purpose of review.

Winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize, Cassie Donish’s (@CassieDonish) collection The Year of the Femme includes long, vivid poems that feel like wandering down a forest path surrounded by a gentle, crisp breeze and the smell of change in the air. Queerness abounds and I felt as though Donish was in my own head pondering desire, sexuality, gender, autonomy, loneliness, and hope. Each poem stands alone in its self-reflection and sincerity and yet the whole is woven together seamlessly. This is a collection that captures the thoughts and emotions of new as well as worn love, our explorations of the body and embodiment, and the questions we leave unanswered.

The Year of the Femme was filled with poetry centered around feminism and the body. It’s raw and honest. Both topics are important in today’s life and needs to be dissected for a broader perspective. With that said, I struggled to get into all the poems. Some were deep and meaningful, while others didn’t possess any spark. Some of the poems were overshadowing others, like they were added just to make the collection more complete.

Even though I couldn’t relate to all the poems, I’m sure a lot of people will adore this collection. It has a lot of angles and aspects which are relatable.

While I’m not a poetry expert, I found this one hard to get into. I really wanted to love it but felt it fell short.

The Year of the Femme is filled with witty, engaging poems. While not all are successful, I fully expect that the eponymous poem The Year of the Femme will be an award-winner.

*I received an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks for the free poetry collection.*

I am not sure how to rate the poetry collections. I loved half the poems and I don't know if I understood the other poems.

I liked the tone of the poems, the references to Virginia Wolf, T S Eliot, Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson and also the topics of the poems which were all very human. We don't need binarisms and fixed genders to be okay! Some poems were very beautiful, other parts of poems I didn't really get. But that might be me. In addition, the layout was quite weird: I don't think that my Kindle got the way were supposed to look on page right. It was all over the place, different lines started in one line, it was weird. Maybe it was on purpose but I just don't know.

Here are some quotes from some of the poems that somehow worked for me. Poetry is very personal, so make up your own mind:

"If he ever moves out, she'll think about getting a dog.
Being a woman means needing a little protection
She gets a little anxious when he travels
The dog will make her feel safe living alone"

"She notices that women are miserable and happy
She notices that some men are empty and try to make women empty
She notices that she makes a lot of generalizations'

"Is there a way to shed gender but admit to its effects"

"Today the leaves crack like glass,
they let the wind in
Today she has mixed feelings
About pronouns and also the snow"

3,5-4 Stars because maybe I didn't get all the poems.

I was hoping that I would enjoy this more but I didn't find that poetry really isn't for me.

I found it didntbkeep my attention but I really wanted to try and read.

It took me no more than 20 minutes to read through this.. mess.
There were a total of 2 poems that I was able to read fully, without thinking about it making no sense. Maybe it had to do with the funky format that the entire thing had, or I don’t know.. I just.. I couldn’t.

I understand that this poetry collection has won awards. However I am rating it at 1 star. Took me a total of about half an hour to read. And I honestly should have DNFed it halfway through.
I didn't enjoy it at all. A lot of the lines and the phrases didn't even particularly make sense with the line either above or below it. Which made it very confusing.
Now I do write poetry myself, so it's not a lack of interest in poetry. And I've read some really understanding and well written poetry collections. And I just don't think that this is one of them.
I wish I could have found myself relating to it, but due to the confusing nature of it, I couldn't even find myself understanding what a lot of the phrases or verses were even trying to suggest. There is a severe lack of punctuation where punctuation should be. I understand that punctuation in poetry can often be very subjective to the author themselves. But it almost seemed like there was little understanding of how to end a verse. Sometimes there was capitalizations for no reason in the middle of a sentence, without punctuation or proper line breaks for multiple pages.

The Year of the Femme by Cassie Donish is a 2018 Iowa Poetry Prize-winning collection. Donish holds a BA in English and comparative religions from the University of Washington, and an MA in human geography from the University of Oregon. She currently teaches classes at the University of Missouri in Columbia, where she's pursuing a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing.

The collection opens with "Portrait of a Woman, Mid-Fall." A woman alone thinks of life and dreams while at the same time autumn is in view out the window. There seems to be a trap between security -- man or a dog, happiness or misery. There is a binary world that restricts dreams and time that limits choices. The yellow leaves dance on the wind while the red leaves crunch as they are crushed underfoot. Every day the number of leaves on the trees decrease and the number on the ground increase -- like discarded dreams. The woman wishes she can stop the leaves from changing merely because she knows she cannot. One thing cannot exist without its opposite.

Arrival is not a rival of departure
The two have to work together to make anything happen
All the clocks move together through time

Donish uses language and creates stunning images. Poems in the second section combine memories and impressions:

Daylight glinting off dimes in the grass
Daylight, and our teeth don’t feel
different yet

Daylight on top of the city, on top
of the lake
Daylight through a sieve of fingers
Mimics the skyscrapers
"Meanwhile, in a Galaxy"

The final section, "The Year of the Femme," revisits the concept of the binary in two-part poems. The first part consists of prose poetry, complete sentences, and formed in a near perfect block. The other element of the verse is chaotic in the arrangement of phrases and line breaks. Each half compliments the other much like arrival and departure. A wonderful collection of poetry. Truly, one of the best in contemporary poetry.

Available April 1, 2019