“Why Read Poetry if It Won’t Make You Rich? For starters, your soul will get bigger.”

5 rich, soul stretching stars
Joy Sullivan’s book, Instructions for Traveling West drew me in from the beginning with simple, lush language. “First, you must realize you’re homesick for all the lives you’re not living. Then, you must commit to the road and the rising loneliness. To the sincere thrill of coming apart. Divorce yourself from routine and control...take the trail that promises a view. Get lost…Keep going… Honor everything. Pray to something unnameable… joy is not a trick.”

Words I jotted down while reading various poems: fabulous, sweet, tender, visual, verbs pop, gut punch, lovely sad, joy, powerful, clever and a tad funny, luscious writing, sensual,

“This morning, the sunshine is thick enough to swim in – as you could fling yourself into it and float. I want to wear it like a robe. Squeeze it into my suitcase. Swallow it whole like a hot lemon. I am finally a woman willing to feed herself – light, bread, joy.”

Sullivan’s poems follow the story arc of her life before and after the pandemic as she searches for meanings. “When the pandemic hit, I moved to Oregon to be closer to the mountains. Joan Didion died and I booked a trip to see the redwoods. I quit my job and now, I write late into the night. Sometimes, into morning. I avoid work that feels meaningless. I call my friends. I thank my body, though she breaks. I kiss my lover in public. Often, I go out walking, even in the rain.” Instructions for Traveling West is a book for anyone traveling beyond their usual confined spaces.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I laughed and cried following Joy along her journey of self discovery. The poetry paints a gorgeously painful picture of her upbringing and how that shaped the woman she is now.
I followed her for years on instagram and I love that she had the bravery to publish. Such a triumph.

i absolutely enjoyed this book about starting over, grief, and change. i will definitely be recommending this book to others.

I admit it. I am a poetry fan, a nerd, and an aficionado, although that might imply there is an MFA in English or Creative Writing under my Lilith Fair t-shirt.

I waited for Joy Sullivan’s debut poetry book a bit like my kid used to wait for video game releases. (I can only compare it to so much for myself because I’ve been waiting on books most of my life.)

A delicious title “Instructions for Traveling West” to draw even the most reluctant to potential poetry readers in for a peek inside. But then? The cover image, too? Swoon!

Inside overflows with the poetry of discovery. Purpose. Decisions small. And decisions wide. Like so many people who had the ability (flex-ability?) to do so, Sullivan took some giant risks, leaps, and bounds after some life reassessments during COVID-19, which included leaving her “intended,” selling her home, and moving West (thus that tasty title).

Captured in her poetry? More than every day, but what wakes you up for the day?! For example, Sullivan’s poem “State of Emergency” talks about skin starvation during the pandemic: sweat, hunger, and pining. (Even rereading it while writing this makes me feel a visceral ache, and I did not live alone while sheltering in place.)

Oh! I wish I could share every other poem with you, but I regularly edit other writers, explaining what copyright and plagiarism entail. But I did just take another look at “Howl,” where Sullivan sings (it is an awful lot like singing when the phrasing and meter are so sound and true) about wanting to wear sunshine “like a robe.”

I wish I could spend just ten more minutes in the fine, traveled comfort of her imagination. For now? I will read "Instructions for Traveling West" again and again.

Thank you kindly to Joy Sullivan, Dial Press Trade Paperbacks, and NetGalley for the eARC!

Instructions for Traveling West by Joy Sullivan is like riding with the windows down, one hand in the wind. I highly recommend this book of poetry while on a flight traveling someplace new!

"I wrote a pep talk recently to myself on a bar napkin: no matter which road you take, it will be both glorious and unbearable"

this was such an honest but gentle take on all of the small, and some of the really big, things in life that make me want to pick up anything else she writes as a little repose from the chaos of everyday

this felt like reading letters from one of my closest friends. one that i’ve known deeply but haven’t seen in awhile and so we write letters back and forth trying to convey to the other what it means to exist in the world. exist in our bodies.

some of these felt cherry picked out of my subconscious and were just delectable to consume. i’ll definitely be coming back to this collection when i need to ground myself.

I loved the first few poems and then they started to feel increasingly repetitive/redundant, to the point that I struggled to finish.

I think poetry is so subjective - you can be indifferent towards a poem until it hits you at exactly the right moment/in the right way - so I struggle with rating. There are a number of collections that immediately stunned me and I've never forgotten - like The Carrying by Ada Limon, The World Keeps Ending and the World Goes On by Franny Choi - and this wasn't one of them; that said, I don't feel qualified to comment on the quality of this book, just its own resonance with me as a human. (As a learning for me, I won't be requesting more books of poetry for review!)

Thanks to NetGalley and Dial Press for an ARC in exchange for my honest, albeit messy, review.

I've been following Joy on instagram for a while and was so pleased to read her book. What a beautiful collection! Accessible yet layered, I would recommend this to someone wanting to get into poetry.

Thank you so much for this ARC. I had to stop to slow down and read some of these poems over again. I loved this. I preordered a copy because I need this on my shelf.

What a nice collection of poems! The sense of adventure, nostalgia, raw love and grief expressed through each poem was incredible. I felt completely transported into the life of this author while reading and also saw myself/related to these poems on such a person level. I enjoyed the poems more and more as I read - I especially loved the interlude "Westward, A Woman Walks" where all of the poems have a biblical theme & Eve is the main focus. I felt like the poems kept getting more nuanced and substantial from there! It surprised me how much I enjoyed this collection.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for the opportunity to read Instructions for Traveling West.

I’ve always loved poetry. It’s such a beautiful way to express growth, longing, joy and all the emotions in between. With this being a debut, I was absolutely blown away with how beautifully written and relatable these poems were.

Joy was able to tell us a heartfelt story in every single poem and I am so grateful that this collection exists.

What a gorgeous collection of poetry. I think a poetry book is a "win" for me if I love 60% of the poems, this was a 90%er for me.

I love how the author takes regular situations and makes them beautiful.

I love how she doesn't try to fool the reader but instead speaks plainly.

Reminded me a little of Kate Baer's What Kind of Woman.

I recently started to get into poetry so I was really excited when I saw this book was coming out. These poems are beautiful. I love the way the author writes and I feel a connection to her writing.

Thank you to Joy Sullivan and Random House Publishing Group via NetGalley for the eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Instructions for Traveling West is full of raw emotion and a woman finding herself. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this poetry collection. As someone who was also raised in an evangelical household, I found myself relating to the author whenever she mentioned the trauma that comes with that kind of childhood. The certainty and fear of the rapture and the heaviness of decisions. I loved the poems Buttercream and Culpable for the mirror they held up to my own past and present. I also thoroughly loved the Interlude - Westward a Woman Walks. The fascination with a Biblical woman is something I can also relate to (mine was Esther).
I am so glad I read this poetry collection and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a vulnerable and eloquent look at womanhood and life.

Instructions for Traveling West were great poems. Sullivan's writing is approachable but still insightful.

Some of these poems hit deeply and will resonate for a long time and others were lovely to experience in the moment but may not stick long-term. Overall a lovely collection mediating on existence, wants, and one's relationship to the world.

Instructions for Traveling West by Joy Sullivan is a poetry collection about what happens when we start over and figure out our desires. Here's one of my favorite sections: "Luck, like any little deity, is deeply mysterious and rather unknowable. Best to treat her with only reverence and gratitude. We don't earn luck and she certainly doesn't owe us anything. Manifestation talk stresses me out because it usually means someone is trying to sell you something. Or they want to make you feel bad for being uncertain, where, in reality, uncertainty is actually a beautiful posture of humility, in my opinion... I don't know if karma is real or if we attract, magnetize, manifest or whatnot, but here's some unconfirmed science I live by: love is a really wild energy and like any force field, the more you send out, the bigger the boomerang." I really enjoyed this collection of poetry. Thanks to NetGalley for the free digital review copy. All opinions are my own.

The first thing I noticed about this collection is the musicality in every line, which is only further propelled by the sweeping cadence of natural beauty within. I really think this easy accessibility will help so many readers find themselves within these pages.

A solid mix of abstraction and detail allows these poems to be both grounded and in the clouds. And even better yet, her humor spreads unapologetically throughout to temper what might otherwise read as overly sentimental and bring it back to a place of real human connection.

So many of these poems work in the realms of homesickness, memory, ripe nostalgic longing for the fredom of youth, the lack of fear, being of two worlds and feeling entitled to neither, and gentleness in a world populated by those who would laugh at the ruins.

Sullivan is a master of the final line, really delivering that last lingering image or phrase that is bound to stick in your brain long after you've finished reading the next poem and the next and the next.

I really enjoyed this collection! It was nostalgic and I liked the themes that it explored! There were a few poems that mentioned animal death/violence that I had a hard time with, so I tried to skip them when I could. My favorite poems were: Howl, The Cashier at the Gas Station Asks Where I’m From, Eve’s Apology, Red, My Mother Says Kissing a Man Without a Mustache is Like Eating Eggs Without Salt, After Covid and Comment Section. I also loved this quote from the poem In This New Life - “I’ve finally found a way to live on the inside of my life. This time, I’m the painter. This time, I’m the muse.”