Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for a honest review!

I found that this had a strong beginning with descriptive writing I had an easy time reading, but as the collection continued, I lost that sense of ease and felt the way this was organized as a whole book was scattered.

I appreciate the author for sharing such vulnerability with her writing and enjoyed quite a few of the poems individually, but as a whole collection I feel it could’ve be put together in a more cohesive way.

This was a very beautiful poetry collection. It talks about some really difficult topics, and I think it was handled well. I’d definitely recommend this.

An Otherwise Healthy Woman is a poignant and beautiful collection of poetry. Amy Haddad has an interesting perspective as both a nurse and a long-term patient, and this is especially pertinent because some of the themes of this collection are: the particular vulnerability that comes with declining health, the surreal experience and stilted performance that is being a caretaker for a loved one, all the various forms of grief and loss that one can experience when it comes to mortality and declining health (whether it’s one’s own or those of a friend/family member), how bearing witness and being present can sometimes be the more significant portion of a healthcare worker’s job, and the toll of nursing. The collection is split into three sections: In the Clutch of a Rubber Band, What We Did on the Floor, and Cut along the Lines. As other reviewers have stated, the tone of the collection varies drastically from section to section. The sections themselves allow the collection to flow easily, and the titles of each section are so (insert chef's kiss).

Poetry is a tricky thing, because even when a poet does super cool things with form, and meter, and imagery, it always comes down to personal resonance (at least it does for me). An Otherwise Healthy Woman resonates so deeply with me. There are so many lines I love, lines I wish I’d written:

From “From the Motel Window:”
Brake lights bleed on the gray snow / as cars and buses move in and out / of the teeming parking lot. Healthy and young, / students and coaches trudge to the stadium entrance, / a swim meet, the sign says. Their words hang / in misty clouds over their heads.”
(!!!)

From “My Role as the Wife:”
The director loves spontaneity. Just go with it, he whispers from the wings. / My blocking is uninspired. Mostly, I stand by the bed where my / husband lies. // When the call light is on, I cross left down-stage to the door, looking for help. / waiting for a nurse to pick up the cue. My final scene is full of clichés,”

This poem, is perhaps one of my absolute favorites from the collection. I love that it explores the perspective of a wife of a dying patient as though she is a character in a play. The way that the wife as a character is also critiquing the play itself. I don’t know … I just think it’s such a cool poem!

Haddad is so masterful with the imagery in this collection. My understanding of imagery has been that it extends beyond the visual, and ideally evokes all of the senses. Haddad conjures strange and familiar scents, sensations, sounds. And she does all of that, while being attentive to language and rhythm. For example:

From, “Cafeteria—2013:”
”Friday night at the hospital, / way past dinner time. / The Subway counter is dark / behind its metal cage. Vending / machines, always open, hawk junk / food and sodas. What’s left in / the food line is scummy water, / empty steam tables. Lemon / custard drips from the frozen yogurt machine. The despair / of burnt coffee lingers. / A few shocked souls / in mismatched clothes / stare at turkey breast, corn and / cold fries. …”
This excerpt is giving enjambment, and internal rhyme, and the scent of burnt coffee, and the overwhelming feeling of disgust and exhaustion.
(!!!)

Amy Haddad’s work makes me want to write and then read more a whole lot more of her work. She seems like the sort of writer who is both a poet’s poet and a poet of the people. Despite the bleak subject matter (and how frightened and saddened I was reading most of it), by the final poem I felt awestruck by her craft. An Otherwise Healthy Woman is so worth the read.

Random List of Favorite Poems the Collection:
•Cafeteria--2013
•The Commercial Version of Metastatic Breast Cancer
•New to the Joint
•My Role as the Wife
•An Otherwise Healthy Woman
•Ode to a Freckle above My Left Breast

Thanks to NetGalley and University of Nebraska Press for providing me with an ARC and an opportunity to read this collection in exchange for an honest review!

This book was so many things, but evocative is the strongest word that comes to mind. A book that made me laugh, cry and cringe all within its brevity. I would definitely recommend this to any person searching for new poetry.

Having been in the position of both family member and patient in a hospital setting, many of these poems resonated with me. This didn't feel like poetry to me, it felt more like a collection of lyrical snapshots (idk how else to explain it) but it was an absolutely beautiful collection.

Many thanks to NetGalley for providing an ARC in return for an honest review.

This poetry collection explored three perspectives of the healthcare system: being a family member, a patient, and a nurse. This gave a really clear and unique picture of the author’s experiences with health, care, loss, and intimacy. It felt really promising at first because the poems use descriptive, specific language which I always appreciate. But as I read on, I just got overwhelmed with it. There wasn’t anything left to imagine or interpret as the poems were just packed with details that didn’t always seem to have a purpose other than setting the scene and making the situation very clear, so much that it felt like that was the only goal. It was hard to connect with them. For example, “inches from my nose, she inspects me through slivered parakeet-green eyes scanning through soft tissue, muscle, bone on a level no ct or mri can reach,” was incredibly easy to picture, but didn’t read like poetry. I appreciated the stories told through these poems and they’re important ones to share, but I wish the language had been filtered more.

This collection is more narrative than I think I expected. The poems sometimes feel very "here's a moment," but leave readers to do a lot of the meaning-making. Part 1 focuses on family caregiver experiences, Part 2 focuses on nursing and provider experiences, and Part 3 focuses on patient experiences directly. The highly sectioned nature almost made the collection feel like three different chapbooks attached, not a synthesized or well-integrated whole. To be fair, I had anticipated and wanted more poems like Part 3, with the openness and self-analysis of one's own patient journey. The poems I did enjoy most, like the titular one or "The Commercial Version of Metastatic Breast Cancer," came in Part 3. Comparatively, Part 1 felt like it often blurred what is with what can or should be, especially when it comes to the currently highly gendered set-up of family caregiving. Part 2 had some staples of what makes me uncomfortable in provider-driven narratives and poetry, including labeling a patient by how he "denies" everything—there are ethical and social questions in writing about patients so dismissively or distrustingly. Similarly, a few saneist jokes about mental health center names, swapped between nurses, bothered me. Especially because this collection is more descriptive and not analytical—it doesn't unpack how or why these moments could occur, or how it really felt to live through them, or what could be different—it was harder to move past these flaws.

This is an emotional set of poems wasn't exaclty what I was expecting. I think would be more relatable to women who either work in healthcare or have undergone cancer treatment than they were for me. However, I did reflect on my experiences caring for loved ones while reading this. Sometimes this felt more like a collection of poems and underdeveloped vignettes. I was hoping for a more viceral reaction, given the topics.

I'm not 100% sure if this was my kindle or the actual book, but the formatting of many of these poems felt all over the place.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC of An Otherwise Healthy Woman in exchange for an honest review.

thank you netgalley

my only real complaint is that i wish the poems were longer and that there were more. the content was beautiful. i feel lucky to have been able to read the authors experience and roles throughout a hospital. but... the shortness of the poems makes it difficult for them to have had a lasting impact on me.

⭐️⭐️⭐️/5 (3 stars)

a collection of poetry by someone who has experienced both sides of healthcare: as the nurse and as the patient. entries touch on hierarchies amongst healthcare workers as well as experiences undergoing chemotherapy and surgical procedures. a valuable collection for those with chronic illnesses, cancer survivors, loved ones of those with health difficulties, and healthcare workers (the latter of whom can always benefit from reminders of what it means to be a patient).

<i>Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for providing me with an ARC of this work!</i>

caretaker, nurse, patient. daughter, wife, medical professional, patient.
this poem book explores the different roles that the author takes in a hospital throughout her life, none of them easy.
a short, yet profound read. My favorite poems included the one the book was named for and “ The Commercial Version of Metastatic Breast Cancer”

I really wanted to like this poetry because of the subject, but I just couldn’t get into it. I feel like it was all over the place, and not about one certain experience which would have been better.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.
I think poetry can be very personal and resonate with people differently. Unfortunately this one just wasn't for me. I just didn't connect and/or couldn't get into the rhythm of it.

This was so sad. So heartbreaking but written so beautifully. I believe these poems will help women feel less lonely when going through something so devastating. Although very sad, it's very real, raw and emotional. It's so honest and brave.

Beautifully heartbreaking and almost excruciatingly detailed. Each poem felt so personal it was hard to read at times. Especially “Home Assessment” as I related to a lot of the themes surrounding it and so when that one came up it felt so real.

There’s a lot of shifting perspective when it comes to grief. Whether it be heartbreaking because it’s your family or more medical as a doctor, Haddad explores all the aspects.

“The Promises We Make as Women” will stay in my head forever.

I think this collection would be super valuable for someone who works in healthcare or the medical field or is personally struggling with health problems or cares for someone who does. A lot of the poems I wasn't able to personally connect to but they were all beautifully written. Even though I don't feel that this was written for me I still find it to be an extremely valuable collection.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This collection was certainly one to make me form a lump in my throat. It almost felt like I was taking a tour through a hospital with every poem. While the structure didn't feel a whole lot like the poetry I am used to and I didn't connect as much as I thought I would, I appreciated the overall flow and message.

This was definitely a hard read for me. Each section is very different giving you a look into people's lives. It was emotional to read and sometimes hard to get through. It was incredibly well written and I enjoyed that.

Thank you to NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was... a difficult read. As someone with chronic illness, I picked it up hoping to find some echoes of myself inside. And although I came out with some new all-time favorites (Bottom of the Cup, Whole-Berry Cranberry Sauce; The Promises Women Make to Each Other), i didn't find the resonance I had expected within the pages.
And that's okay! Haddad explores grief from the perspective of a breast cancer survivor (a journey i haven't experienced personally), sharing a candid glimpse into her pain and struggle.

This is a book that is so tonally different in each section that I feel like I would be doing a disservice not to give each part its own mini review, so here we go:)

Part 1: in the clutch of a rubber band
I liked this section a lot. Haddad captures the feeling of overwhelming numbness so well, i felt like I was reading each word as if muffled underwater. Poetry as a genre is meant to make one feel something, and Haddad manages to convey the very feeling of feeling nothing; the defensive numbness under looming waves of tragedy.
I think this first section was my favorite.

Part 2: What we did on the floor
This is a heavy section. It gives the reader a glimpse into the world of a nurse. It's not what i expected, and it is incredibly crushing if you are an empathetic person. The poem "Families Like This" in particular felt like it needed a strong trigger warning to preface it, especially for someone who might be going in unprepared (like I did)

Part 3: Cut along the lines
The last section is a blend of the two before it, thematically, as Haddad goes through the process of breast cancer treatment. It's heavy as well, shifting between ache and numbness.
My favorite piece from this segment was "Cat Scan".

All in all, incredibly well written and hard hitting poetry, if not my cup of tea exactly. 7/10

(I received a digital copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review)