Penned during the pandemic, Leigh Stein's What to Miss When is a collection of poetry about the human experience in the digital age — mortality, swiping, double taps galore, mortality, pop culture, the way our lives have become seemingly unmanageable without the sway of technology... it's all there, asking you to pause and reflect (and laugh out loud, and sometimes, weep.)

“No one asks about my wedding dress anymore—
we don’t know yet which version of the simulation
we’re in. Watch me sew a mermaid gown
out of Clorox wipes on my YouTube channel”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was the book, this year, that reminded me why we read literature. Stein’s poetry is alive, in that she doesn’t stop observing our world when her poems are a bit aware, a bit funny, but keeps going, past comfort, to dive into the roots of our issues. WTMW delivers an observation of American society that is brutal, hilarious, and true.

Stein wrote WTMW during 2020 & captures that out-of-body feeling of disorientation many of us experienced. It magnifies the agonies & annoyances of this age. Garwood’s review says WTMW is “shouting the things so many of us are afraid to even whisper.”

And again: “shouting the things so many of us are afraid to even whisper.”

Stein’s emotions are spilled all over the pages. She’s angry. And she lets that fire burn from her poems. It’ll sear you. And you want that—to be challenged.

WTMW is transformative. So many times, I had to sit back & just absorb. Lines like:

“Many of us suspected we might die one day,
but the grocery story risk adds a new twist.”

“When I’m ready
for my nervous breakdown
it will be on my terms; this is America"

I’ve felt very isolated during Covid. I’ve been furious & shocked, disillusioned & exhausted. Reading WTMW was healing for me, as Stein gave words to what I felt like I was screaming into the void.

I think it’s so important to challenge ourselves, to try to see the world from another perspective. And that’s what WTMS does: it offers perspective.

I cannot recommend Stein’s collection strongly enough. Perhaps, as we continue to battle this pandemic, you might be able to glimpse inside one perspective of the pandemic.

And also—it’s a lot of fun. It’s as hilarious as it’s powerful.

🌤

Thank you @softskullpress for this copy. I’ve been honored to share my thoughts on this collection.

QOTD: What have you read this year that should be automatically added to that exclusive club of “literature?"

Leigh Stein writes out her dirty little thoughts on pop culture like Tiger King, Love is Blind and Michael Jordan and my GOD, bless her for doing so. What to Miss When is perfection.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this lovely collection.

A collection of poetry that reflects on all the events and trends that popped up during quarantine. Some led to a few raised eyebrows and others some chuckles under the breath. It was super relatable and funny. Great read to remember all the crazy celebrity news and tv shows **cough cough love is blind ** that came out during the rollercoaster of a year.

In her dazzling new collection, Leigh Stein has managed to create art from the mess of modern life, with poems both elegiac and flippant in equal measure. Whether she’s commenting on the pervasiveness of social media and its effect on our collective psyche or the vagaries of human behavior amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, she manages to imbue each poem with just enough levity to keep you from losing hope. I cannot recommend this collection highly enough.

Stein airs all her "naughty" thoughts here on such timely topics as virtue signaling, political correctness, and the pandemic. I suspect many others are more or less secretly thinking along similar lines. A cathartic, playful, devious little read.

Vivid, cinematic poetry about the world we live in now. Beautiful and heartfelt. I found myself sailing on these thoughts and then dreaming about them later. Brava.

I thought that this book of poetry was fine, but nothing more than that. There wasn’t really anything that I strongly disliked, but there was not anything that I liked either.
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It detailed the author’s time in quarantine, and while that will really resonate with some people I am sure, it just was not for me.
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The cover is one of the most beautiful ones I have seen in a while though!
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Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Let me start this out by saying holy sh*t....this was an incredible read.

What to Miss When is a bitterly hopeful look at the millennial experience of the coronavirus covid19 pandemic. It may very well be the most I've related to something about how the past year has gone. The poems range from confessional to riffs off popular movies from the 80's and 90's that will give the reader a small push back in time for a healthy dose of nostalgia.

I was so impressed at how well Stein's words paint a vivid picture in my mind especially when it came to the poem "Groundhog Day". My favorite one from this collection was "Truth or Consequences" as it hit home for me personally and my life pre-pandemic.

Definitely a 5 star read!

Have you ever read something that you just don’t know how to review? For me, that was Leigh Stein’s poetry collection, “What to Miss When.” I loved it and hated it in equal measure. Her writing style is everything that draws me to poetry - entertaining, pertinent, unafraid to take society’s expectations headon. A lot of her poems detailing life under the early days of the pandemic resonated well (I would argue that she captured the surreal feeling of lockdown more sharply than Nikita Gill did in her new poetry collection, “Where Hope Comes From,” which I reviewed earlier this year).
Maybe it’s part of her intent, but Stein really made uncomfortable when she got into social justice critique. She makes valid points about the effectiveness of “twitter scolds,” but I don’t think she ever steps back to think about whether she should be the one making those points. Her tone can come across as cruel and mocking, which is not bad in and of itself, but it’s not something that attracts me to poetry. I turn to poetry for either comfort, empowerment, or to see my own fears and worries reflected back at me in a way that shines a light on how to walk through that fear. A lot of these poems just gave me anxiety, tbh.
I do think that people who enjoy reading that aims to makes them uncomfortable would really enjoy this, as well as anyone who really connected with Sally Rooney’s writing style!

Leigh Stein's What to Miss When, written during the Coronavirus pandemic, is possibly the most of-the-moment book I've ever read. Her quarantine-centric poetry is lush with references, ranging from Boccaccio's Decameron to the 2020 film Palm Springs. Many of these allusions would be lost on members of earlier or later generations, but I, as a millennial, seem to be in Stein's target audience. I felt a wink and a nudge from the author as I contemplated both Tiger King and Mary Oliver, like we were in this pandemic together. Not all of the poems moved me, but there were plenty of zingers and plenty of moments that her words washed over me with the cool ennui of 2020.

I didn’t find any of these poems to be good. Not even sure I would use the word poetry but that sounds too mean. It was interesting seeing the authors interpretation of her time in quarantine and turning events into “poems” but I just am not a fan.

This collection of poems is absolutely transcendent. Most readers will enjoy the impeccable prose and identify. I highly enjoyed it