I had high hopes for this because I loved Milk Fed, but I could not understand anything from this collection. I tried multiple times and just couldn’t get into it. Same weird, grotesque style at her prose, but with nothing real I could grasp onto to keep me afloat.

I enjoy most poetry books if only for their very nature of seeing how the author puts their ideas into writing and the form of poetry that they create. However, as with all books, everyone connects with them differently and sometimes they just don't connect the same way as one hoped they would. That happened with this book. It was an intriguing book, but ultimately I just did not connect with it and enjoy the book the way that I wanted too.
It was a decent book, but unfortunately not one that I would reread.

"Superdoom" was an incredibly enjoyable read. It drips with metaphor; it's the type of poetry that begs to be ingested slowly. It has religious (Catholic/Christian) undertones, but I find that it does not alienate readers who are not of those belief systems. Broder is not afraid to shy away from sensuality and how it mixes into the religious ideals she keeps.

My top 3 poems are:
"Your Mother Is Dying And I Want Details"
"Bones"
and
"Today I Will Be A Benevolent Narrator"

Superdoom is a collection of poems drawn from Melissa Broder’s previous poetry collections. This was my first foray into her poetry, but having read her novel The Pisces a couple years ago, her tone and sensibility were instantly recognizable.

Thematically, there is a lot going on that reminded me of the fixations of The Pisces, and this collection succeeded in creating similar feelings of queasiness and debasement that I can’t say I particularly wanted to linger over… but I definitely admire Broder’s effectiveness in conjuring such visceral feelings, especially as they relate to sex, intimacy, and embodiment. And, it should not be left out, she is at times very funny.

There were plenty of good and interesting poems in the collection, but on the whole I found it a little repetitive in tone and style. The frequent “verbing” and “adjectiving” of nouns, coining of new words, etc., while not a practice I object to at all, was perhaps a little overused and contributed to the feeling of homogeneity. Or in another light, a very consistent poetic style.

Thank you to Tin House for the ARC.