I found the poetry in this book to be very interesting and engaging. The word choices that the author made were beautiful and I enjoyed the way she weaved stories together by seemingly thin threads. I would happily recommend this book to someone looking for a collection of horror poetry.

I found some poems in this book to be really enthralling, and some poems just didn't hit right. However this is an enjoyable example of horror poetry.

Poetry is something that can be intensely personal, and that can also make it difficult to review. In this case, I found myself flip-flopping every few pages; some of the poems in this collection were definitely not my cup of tea, while others really stood out to me.

I was immediately enchanted by the aura of this collection and its description as "a labyrinth of nightmares, metamorphosis, and the liminal spaces of the beautiful grotesque," but unfortunately, things felt off-balance in the beginning. The tight scheme and meter of the first few pages felt disappointingly at odds with my expectations - "the primal urge for survival" and suggestion to ground oneself in the soil of the forest floor upon reading had me expecting a wilder formlessness, raw and visceral, which didn't take shape (or rather, unshape) until much further in.

"Chrome", "Apple", "I Know", "Babylon", and "Opio-Cordyceps" (quite a populous volume) were some of my favorites in this collection, because they so clearly evoked the sensory experiences of a narrative as opposed to a gaggle of words-around-a-theme or a loose collection of adjectives that some of the other poems presented.

Reviews of this collection seem to be pretty evenly split between "hell yes" and "hell no", and I felt that deeply while reading and while trying to compose this review. I've therefore similarly split the difference and given Bestial Mouths three stars, simply because neither extreme felt right for me to go all-in on. There were hits and there were misses, but if you enjoy the mystique of viscera and have a rainy Saturday afternoon to fill, this might not be such a bad way to do it.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Raw Dog Screaming Press for sending me this advance copy for consideration!

I hate rating poetry (especially Indie poetry!) this low, but I also feel obligated to an honest review when I read books “in exchange for an honest review”.
The stunning cover and the themes mentioned in the blurb were enough to draw me into this book immediately. Horror poetry with themes of body, liminal spaces and “identity, metamorphosis, and the primal urge for survival, weaving through time, myth, and shifting perspectives”…? Sign me up please!!

Unfortunately this turned out to be that style of poetry that I can’t stand. Seemingly random words thrown together on a page, hoping to amass to something profound, but ultimately lacking the cohesion to be more than a mind-map of words with an enter after each. Think of Amanda Lovelace’s style of poetry, now add some horror imagery instead of princesses and flowers, and you have an impression of this collection.
To me, poetry is about the art of words and language. It’s often more music than prose, and although it doesn’t have to rhyme perse, there needs to be a type of rhythm or cadence. This style of modern poetry lacks that completely, and it makes me question what’s even considered poetry… I understand it’s subjective, but simply hitting the Enterkey after every word, or otherwise playing with the print-face to me isn’t enough.

Thank you to Netgalley and Raw Dog Screaming Press for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Brenda S. Tolian is one of the few and revered horror creators who makes you drop everything you’re doing and immerses you in her immersive prose with a pull so powerful, it can transport readers far. It affects me in a way I am having difficulty putting it into words. Her previous book, “Blood Mountain,” left me hungering for a lot more of Tolian’s work, which has an intensity that few other writers possess.

Like her contemporaries Christina Sng, Stephanie Wytovich, and Cina Pelayo, all of whom who have also had award-winning poetry books from Raw Dog Screaming Press, Tolian joins this earth-shaking coven. Her poems are suffused with an energy of rage, of showing women’s power, of warning those who doubt it that they will suffer. Tolian also weaves in expressions of her own disability in a way that is breathtaking.

Her use of language and choices of new lines, of phrases that slap the reader in the face, is a distinct strength of her poems. With things like “snapping of jaw” and “virgins done wrong” and of couplets “some thing you tell” while “others you swallow,” there’s a way that she constructs and deconstructs the storytelling aspects of the poem as a whole, and it is marvellous to experience.

Tolian’s poems also imbue the reader with a sense of hope in the same way that the other RDSP authors mentioned have also done so. I am thinking of Sng in particular and how the messages in her poems make the promise of justice for the wronged, of those who have caused harm finally get their retribution, that women are going to fight back even harder, that we cannot go back.

The metamorphizing affects and transformations in Tolian’s poems are also vivid, taut, and deeply visceral. At times there is raw desire, and it does not apologize for its need.

Tolian is also a writer whose playing around with shapes and forms in how the poems look on the page in shapes is something else that astounds me and is a pleasure to follow.

And there is a sense of magic that blankets the entire collection as the reader can see Tolian in their mind’s eye, weaving magic like the sorceress poet she is, a siren of dark poetry.

So many of the poems are fraught with an intense energy, and of beauty but also ugly truths and all of them come together in what makes for a *magnificent* collection from Raw Dog Screaming Press.

Do NOT sleep on Brenda Tolian’s newest poetry collection. It deserves to win so many major accolades.

This book was nothing like I expected, and I'm honestly disappointed. The dedication on the first page got my hopes up, but a lot of the poems in here are just nonsense words thrown together for descriptive imagery. It was like a poem that was written using solely descriptive words to go with the title of the poem. Some of the imagery was nice, but the flow and transition into the next paragraphs are too abrupt and there seems to my no rhythm or rhyme to any of it.

I found it difficult to get through this because it was genuinely a mess. The sentences and structure of some of these poems are terrible and don't make sense.

Poems I enjoyed:
Chrome
Jonathan Fry

Thank you NetGalley and RDS Publishing for the e-ARC of this book ❤️

I didn’t know horror poetry was a thing but the cover caught my eye. This was really creepy and interesting. I liked the mix of horror and feminine rage.

Jonathon Fry was my favorite one, it reminded me of Jack the Ripper.