I wish there was the authors note at the start about it found poetry because I have never encountered this before and wondered why the poems didn’t flow. It’s hard to review on this basis because I didn’t enjoy it. But I do wonder if I’d have viewed it differently if I’d known. My favourite poem was “of the earth”

Thank you netgalley for this collection of poems one of my favorite things about poetry is the author can do so much with creator certain concepts and stories in poems and thats what i liked about this collection which had alot of floral elements to it the cover really caught my eye i will say some of them confused me a bit but thats the thing with poetry some of the poems you will get and some you wont but each poetry novel has a poem for someone. Overall quick read and i enjoyed the story element in the poems and the details and writing.

In Necessary Poisons, Andrea Blythe creates a cycle of found poems, all sourced and pieced together from a single longer text. The result is an atmospheric greenhouse of poems where dark thoughts bloom. It would be a fun read for anyone who enjoys the eerie intersection of horror and poetry, as well as writers or other creators who like a compelling creative project built around strict limitations that paradoxically end up leading to greater and wholly unexpected possibilities.

On my initial read through the collection, I did find it challenging to orient myself within the poems. It wasn’t entirely clear who was speaking, or what the underlying narrative was, or if there even was one. But after reading the author’s note and gaining a better understanding of the method and limitations of the project, I took another pass through the book and found myself better able to just go with the oozy, toxic flow. My favorites were the more botanical, imagery-driven poems later in the book. I especially liked the menace in “Of the Earth,” which threatens, “…I am/any deadly thing—nightshade,/belladonna, or adder toadstool.” Love those Macbeth/Weird Sisters vibes.

My thanks to NetGalley and Interstellar Flight Press for providing me a copy of Necessary Poisons in exchange for my review.

This is collection of ‘found poems’ which means the words used originated in another text. This collection of found poetry plays on the macabre and is haunting but beautiful. I don’t normally read poetry but this was a great foray into the genre for me because of the horror themes.
Thank you to NetGalley, Interstellar Flight Press and the author for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

A beautifully haunting collection of erasure poems about writing, creation, and love. I would have preferred to read the author's note before reading the poems because I like to know that I am reading erasure poetry; it helps me appreciate the author's efforts more. It also explained the seemingly random choice of some of the words, like the recurring image/character of the jackal. I would like to go back and reread some of the poems now that I know how they were created. Blythe managed to make such alluring yet unnerving poems from an unfinished epistolary novel by Stephen King, and I am truly impressed.

Thank you to Interstellar Flight Press for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I liked the book and the concept was really amazing but it just didn't hit for me!
4.5 stars
the main character was really likeable

I get why others didn't like this, but I greatly enjoyed it.

Let me explain.

This is a book of found poetry, which I didn't learn until the end. It might have been better to have that information up front. Found poetry isn't for everyone. It tends to be more disjointed by the nature of what it is, and the flow is not always smooth. That is, to me, part of it's appeal.

It isn't pretty. It isn't sweet. It isn't gentle.

It's raw. It's awkward. It's made of the carcasses of other works.

That's a particularly fitting way to describe this book. The poems were macabre, dark, and fixated on death. They were also beautiful. There were multiple lines I liked so much I googled them to find what they were from only to discover they were Frankenstein-ed together by Blythe, so that something wholly new and beautiful was created. "We will all be leaving without prior notice" is simply a gorgeous line, and one of many. "Morning, Wrapped in Maple and Pine" was probably my favorite poem in the collection.

I loved the witchy vibes, loved the twisted phrases describing twisted thoughts, and overall really enjoyed it. It's a quick read and one you won't regret.

Enjoyed these poems by Andrea Blythe. First time reading "found poetry", and definitely found it an interesting way. All the poems definitely worked. Will definitely read more from Andrea Blythe. #NecessaryPoisons #NetGalley

This was my first reading of found poetry and while I found it confusing, I really liked the imagery and some lines were quite brilliant.

The drawings are gorgeous and the whole tone of this short collection is exquisitely creepy.

I would definitely recommend it for AHS fans.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC

i really enjoyed the poems about deadly herbs & witchery but a lot of them really lost me & didn’t flow as well! i saw the vision but the execution wasn’t quite there for me with some of them!

If I could rate the illustrations in this book I would give them a 4/5 stars. They are beautiful and uncanny, while fitting with the found poetry content of this collection. I love the idea of found poetry and enjoyed some of Andreas’s poems, but didn’t really connect with them or liked them enough to purchase or recommend this collection to anyone else I know. I think the idea of using Stephen king books really cool and creative way to make darker themed poetry.

The illustrations and cover are awesome. However I just didn't feel anything when reading the poems.

We begin in a darkness but something breaks free and delves into another darkness. A darkness that don's eat her up, more like she consumes the darkness. This was an eerie and very ominous poetry collection. With a sense of everything is what it is, even the strangest things.

I got caught in the words and I really like the originality that the author created. And taking something from the master himself, Stephen King, to create something remarkable is never wrong.

Thank you to NetGalley and Interstellar Flight Press for this ARC. All opinions are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley and Interstellar Flight Press for providing an e-ARC from in exchange for an honest review!

Let me start this by saying that I love poetry, and I have from a young age. In other words, I love analyzing and philosophizing on poetic turns of phrase, and I love experimental content, especially with dark feminist themes like this collection by Andrea Blythe. However, even if you're not a fan of esoteric poetry, this collection is still accessible and interesting, with a narrative through line that becomes more apparent at the halfway mark.

On the surface, this through line appears to be that of the female narrator recognizing and escaping an abusive relationship, and then reinventing herself and embracing her darker side - perhaps even turning that back on her abuser Ex Machina style. This in and of itself is really interestingly executed. However, I was even more fascinated by the meta-commentaries hidden beneath this. The first is a commentary on the relationship between the reader, writer, and the female protagonist of a story, in which the reader plays voyeur and judges the protagonist (especially a female one), and the writer (by virtue of pushing the protagonist towards growth) plays god and puts the protagonist through suffering in order to create an experience for the reader. The second is an exploration of what it means for an individual woman to truly become the protagonist of her own life. It asks us - whose story are we in? How can we break away from letting anyone else define us?

In Necessary For the Story, Blythe writes "Even I don't know what I mean." I interpreted this line as referring to the way in which the protagonist of a story must be ignorant to their own flaws and their deeper psychological needs in order to go on the journey of the story and learn from it (in other words, to arc). This line also felt like it was reflective of the experience of being a young woman, socialized to look to others and especially men for validation and self-definition, and how the drive to become what others have said we should be leaves us feeling like we don't even know ourselves. It's this very lack of self-definition and self-esteem that leaves many of us vulnerable to the abuses of men, romantic partners, and the world at large.

As the "protagonist" of this narrative gains understanding of her circumstances and seeks to break out of them, she must deconstruct all the things she was forced to be in order to redefine herself on her own terms. In Bouquet of Illusions, Andrea Blythe writes "I was a letter in the margins - a ghost." And then in The Fabled Sympathy: "I read myself blank, then write myself over again." And finally in The Whole Business: "I write myself deadly."

I thoroughly enjoyed this moving and thought-provoking exploration of identity, relationships, abuse, gender, trauma, and healing.

There were only a few things that took away from my enjoyment of this poetry collection. The first was the odd shifts in word use and tone, sometimes going from formal and flowery to strangely blunt and vulgar, but not in a way that felt coherent or that worked for me at all. For example, lines like:
- "A real sucker for the deep mysteries" (I Have Tried to Explain)
- "I'm going to burn if he gives me the okay" (A Wake)
- "In love, I suck your existential c**k, which bobs flat" (A Fallen Heaven)
- "I ghosted society and ended up impersonating a dead dog" (The Zenith)
- "Never mind the encyclopedias, empiric data, or other bullshit" (Sudden Botany)

In the note at the end of the collection, Andrea Blythe mentions that this is a collection of found poetry, meaning that these are poems formed by taking phrases and words from other existing texts and putting them together. She drew the most from Stephen King's epistolary book The Plant. This fact helped explain the inconsistent word use and tone, however I felt a little disappointed as I'm not much of a Stephen King fan, nor am I a huge fan of found poetry. That being said, I did enjoy this work and the author was very creative in putting it all together.

This is a dark collection of poems unlike anything I have read. At times disjointed and jarring, and at others poignant and piercing. The imagery flows through the poems beautifully. And after reading the Authors note the skill and creativity of these poems is even more impressive. The art work is brutally stunning, and even more meaningful in that Ms. Blythe created the art herself!

Necessary Poisons is a dark collection of poems. They definitely weave a trail of black magic, supernatural and death. I enjoyed the visual pictures throughout the book, they added an extra layer to the poems. I enjoyed the authors note explained found poetry, very enlightening.

I enjoyed reading them and would recommend them to others that might enjoy poems with such dark themes.

Thank you NetGalley and Interstellar Flight Press for this ARC.

First, thanks to the author and NetGalley for the advance copy!

So this was definitely an interesting premise. My take was that the 'narrator(s)' started as a sort of victim and evolved into something dangerous, venomous. I'm not sure that I'm even close to right, as it was really just a bunch of disjointed thoughts and words across each poem (which was later explained to be intentional).

I don't know, I had fun reading it, but I don't feel like I really took away anything. Some of the poems did a decent job in being creepy, and the artwork scattered through the book was quite lovely. It was heavily influenced by Stephen King, so if you're a fan, check this out.

Some poets are quite bent on explaining to the reader exactly what they meant. This is not true of Andrea Blythe in Necessary Poisons. As with many redacted poems, these don't always maintain a logical structure or logic, but they leave a lot of room for interpretation. There's an underlying theme of identity and death, but it's not so much preoccupation as it is a constant intrusive thought. Death is just death, unmoored from grief or loss of life, which is a rather gothic way of thinking about it. I don't know that I'd seek out Blythe's other works based on this one, but it was refreshing to consider the world from a little bit of a different angle and to allow myself to interpret these poems however I liked.

Thank you to NetGalley and Interstellar Flight Press for this ARC. All opinions are my own.

I really enjoyed this collection. It felt well-put together and full of interesting ideas that meshed together in a way that made sense and, more importantly, felt fluid and connected. The included art was beautiful and fit well with the poetry, I loved seeing it.

This wouldn't be included among my favorite poetry collections, but it's a great one and one I definitely recommend to anybody interested.

I'm so sorry but this is genuinely terrible?? It's just random words and phrases strung together with no meaning or feeling which apparently was on purpose??