"Being born took courage, sir."

Poetry used to be a huge part of my life. As a child I was convinced I was going to be a writer: a song writer, a novelist, a poet. I had composition notebooks filled to overflowing with my own words, and, eventually, found myself diligently copying down the words of others. I read voraciously - I would go down library shelves book by book, checking each one out without even reading the synopsis. Words were important to me. At some point, however, the reading stopped. Books felt too big, too difficult. I isolated myself in the world of music, a way to drown out the goings on in the world around me without having to open my eyes.
It was in this context that I was first acquainted with Andrea Gibson. Someone somewhere posted a video of them reciting their poem "Say Yes", and it absolutely astounded my 13 year old brain. I had never considered listening to poetry before. I stayed up late doing more research and decided I was interested in slam poetry. I can remember listening to the entirety of Flower Boy repeatedly in high school while riding the bus: I probably could have recited "Jellyfish" from memory at one point. I had also by this point branched out into listening to other poets, like Denice Frohman.
As a result, reading You Better Be Lightning felt almost nostalgic to me. It reminded me of being young and figuring myself out. It made me think about change, transitioning, growing. It's been a few years since I've been on a school bus, and while I still rely on music at times, I can read again. And it's enjoyable.
This was the first time I've ever actually read one of Gibson's poetry collections. It was such a different experience but, somehow, I could still hear their voice in my head carrying me through every poem. "To Whom It Definitely Concerns", "Love Letter to the Tick That Got Me Sick", "What Sucks About the Afterlife", "How the Worst Day of My Life Became the Best", and "Not Alone" were among my favorites. There were a lot of strong lines in this collection, some that are sure to echo in my head for years to come. I appreciate Gibson's honesty, and the way they openly share their feelings about depression, climate apocalypse, chronic illness, and the messiness that is queer life. This is sure to be a hit among fans.

3 stars

Stories of resilience told in poems that confront the harshness of reality yet still find softness & love. The content is quite good, but my rating isn’t higher because the poems aren’t entirely to my tastes stylistically.

[What I liked:]

•These poems have something to say, & are personal. They’re not just regurgitated platitudes repackaged in sparkly words. The crystallized moments of meaning sometimes get lost in rambling paragraphs, but I still genuinely appreciate what is there.

•The threads of family, love, hope, & resilience run through the sorrow & rage confronted in these poems. There is darkness, but also the light ahead you might not be able to see right now.


[What I didn’t like as much:]

•I prefer poetry that’s spare, where every word is carefully chosen. (Most of) these poems are stylistically different from that. They go on & on for pages. They ramble & aren’t tightly focused. They use filler words & run on sentences. They’re more like stream of consciousness journal entries. Just not my thing.

CW: suicide, mental illness, homophobia, self-harm, sexual assault/CSA, chronic illness, domestic violence

[I received an ARC ebook copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Thank you for the book!]

I have been reading Andrea Gibson's poetry for almost ten years, and I know that because when I was a newly out transgender teen in high school, Gibson's collections were the only books on my shelves by a trans/gnc author at the time. I found comfort and belonging in their words both on the page and in their spoken words in their slam poetry on YouTube, and continue to follow their work to this day. I say all of this mainly to preface that I do not say it lightly when I say that I believe that this may be Gibson's best poetry collection yet.

The poems in this collection span multiple topics, from Gibson's experience with both chronic and mental illness, suicide rates in queer youth, explorations/discussion of gender identity, queerness, break-ups, suicidality, grief in the time of coronavirus, and more. Gibson discusses these topics with their usual attention to detail, with some pages-long poems flowing effortlessly, easily devoured, as well as short, gut wrenching poems with words that will stay with you long after they're read.

This book was like a warm hug & a therapy session after this long year and a half. Gibson's trademark optimism mixed with their deadpan humor and unflinching honesty makes for a memorable collection that I will highlight, annotate, and return to over and over.

It wasn't until I read 'Queer Youth are Five Times More Likely to Die By Suicide' with tears in my eyes (I was a queer youth, after all) followed by 'No Such Thing as the Innocent Bystander' that I realised this poetry wasn't just magical, it was also extremely powerful. Before I hit these poems in particular, I wondered if Gibson was prone to letting their poems sometimes disintegrate towards the end in a way that made me wish they were tightened up a little more, and it took me a few poems to realise this is intentional, and they start off coherent and then spill into raw emotion in a way that's like a gift. (Some are extremely tight as well, don't get me wrong, this isn't an 'every poem' thing, just a 'some of them' thing).

So grateful to Button Books for the review copy, because this is a new author to me, in Western Australia, and I've needed poetry like this. I think any queer person, any nonbinary person, any gender-diverse person would, but so would any person who cares about justice, and time, and love, and heartbreak, and chronic illness. There's a lot of stand out moments here, a lot of them, from the declaration in that intent title, to the dreamlike cover, to the poems which start out as a story and end up bleeding the truth in sentence fragments and emotional raw wounds laced with so much hope.

I'm the kind of reader that automatically starts unconsciously assigning stars when I first start reading. I hovered on four stars, and then shot right past five and am now annoyed I can't actually force Goodreads to assign more, lol. Love this treasure trove, and will be rereading it going into the future.

Another incredible collection of poems from the incomparable Andrea Gibson. I have been looking forward to this book for a while and it did not disappoint. Gibson has such a way with words and there is so much power in this poetry. Some of the poems meant more to me than others, but they all had their place in this book, and I appreciate Gibson's writing more than I can explain.

Andrea Gibson is an extraordinary modern poet who shifts gut-wrenching anger and gentle intimacy with total aplomb. This collection has great momentum. It feels almost as though you are romping through the poet's thought processes and reflections in a way which feels live and full of energy.

I both laughed and cried reading this collection. It has piqued my interest in this poet and I will now be looking to read more of her work. For now, I'll be recommending this one, You Better Be Lightning.

I absolutely loved this collection of button poetry. ‘The Museum of Broken Relationships’ is easily my favorite. I knew from the title of this book that it would have some really thought provoking pieces. It has poetry for everyone. These poems are heartfelt and relatable which is important to me. I felt like I was reading about myself on some of the pages.

I haven’t read much poetry since college, over five years ago, but the title and cover of this collection enticed me in once more. As a person who possesses an English degree, my immediate thought was to start trying to pull apart each and every poem, line by line, and dissect its meaning. But, no, I wanted to enjoy this collection in a different way. I didn’t need to dive in deep to enjoy these poems. The style is very conversational, very much like verbal storytelling. There is sometimes 'proper' form, with short lines and stanzas. Sometimes, the poems are more like paragraphs of prose.

You Better Be Lightning is full of incredibly relatable poems about seizing the day, about queerness, about living when life sucks, coping through depression, and about witnessing the small joys in life, and making them bigger than society often allows because it’s all most people get. It’s about facing yourself, and coming to terms with your imperfections and toxic traits and using that acceptance to improve. As much as there is so much negativity and uncertainty, Gibson manages to put quite a bit of positivity in the darkest of places: “If we aimed to be just half as good as one of the earth's mistakes, we could turn so much around.”

The amount of self love, of love for the planet, of love for others, familial, friendly, and otherwise, is just overflowing from almost all the works in this book. It makes me yearn for my own love, for my own home of warmth and comfort. Where home is a person and not a place, where you can find permanence in that person, some sense of stability.

I would recommend this for people who need a little encouragement to see the world around them and enjoy the little things. For queer people who don't fit into the binary and need a little reminder that life is a spectrum and they don't need to fit into one box or the other to exist. For people who need some hope but not so much that it seems impossible to do so.

“If every heart-worthy novelist weeps for days before killing off a beloved character, god must have spent centuries sobbing before pressing a pen to the page of this year.”