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.

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??

Necessary Poisons is a playful experiment in collage, both visual and textual. The volume takes you into a dark, botanical world of carnivorous plants, women and witches. It’s an interesting piece of work bringing found poetry to a coherence I didn’t know it could have, as it spans a whole series of poems.

Thanks netgalley for the e-arc!

The most important ingredient in writing, especially poetry, is passion, and this just didn't have it.

This book combined my love for horror and poetry. This is the first found poetry collection I’ve read and I thoroughly enjoyed it. All of the poems were very cohesive and the graphics also helped convey the themes.

As I read this collection of poems, I noticed that it didn't flow well. It felt like random sentences, and sometimes random words just put together with no real meaning. Then I got to the author's note at the end and realized that's exactly what this is.

This is just a bunch of seemingly random phrases put together and it reads exactly like that. No meaning, no feeling, nothing but words.

This was an interesting narrative, it seemed to flow from a character resenting & questioning her role in the story to a woman reflecting on an abusive relationship to that woman breaking free and becoming dangerous herself. I quite liked some of the line from The Intention of Being, Never the Last Letter, A Wake, A Matter of Transition, The House of Interrogation and Sudden Botany. I also thought space was used in some of the poems - particularly Belatedly, The Refusal - well.

A solid collection, and a short read. Wasn't expecting to find out it was a found poetry collection from Stephen King's writing though, that revelation at the end surprised me (and possibly soured my opinion of the collection a little as I'm not much of a King fan).

This collection just ended up being okay for me. At least it didn't take a lot of time to get through, but I didn't really end up taking anything away from it like I have with previous horror poetry collections I have read in the past.

"Necessary Poisons" by Andrea Blythe is a sterling work of art. The only reason I give it three stars is because I have little appreciation and/or imagination for the abstract.

I appreciate receiving this ARC from Netgalley and I do highly recommend this book for anyone that is interested in abstract poetry and/or eco-poetry.

Necessary Poisons is a delightfully eerie little book of found poetry, which uses words from a Stephen King book called The Plant.
As an amateur poet myself, I cannot help but to admire the dexterity with which the author has woven her found words together into a collection that tells a tale of a woman and her sense of self, all the while interweaving pieces that seem almost more suited to a fantasy novel.
It’s a little dark, bordering on disturbing at times, but all the while is still that one woman’s story, in all its fragments.
However, I must say that the style of poetry is not my favourite. I love the idea behind it, but I cannot help but prefer other styles, though this one has a particularly creative spark.
Altogether, this was a very quick read, but still left an impression upon me.

This book was such a deep dive into the way phrases, imagery, duality, and the macabre all live within the authors mindset. All of the found poetry is arranged in a way that brings passion and intention to the forefront. The life springing forth from dark soil riddled with decay to help it grow. It’s as multifaceted as nature herself and I adore the interwoven motif of the manuscript and the ever lingering phantom of poisonous plants that thread throughout the poems. It just all comes together so well and I will definitely be revisiting this book!

This is definitely an interesting and eerie poetry collection. It isn't precisely my kind of thing, but I can see it being really well appreciated by goth baddies.

Throughout the book, I felt that the words in the poems didn't quite belong together, and after reading the author's note with the explanation of found poetry, I understand why. I think it would benefit the book, to have the author's note first, so that the reader will have the context for the poems flesh in mind.