Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me to read this as an ARC.

I'm not entirely sure where to begin with this. I've read some horror poetry in the past and quite liked it. This... I did not. The imagery, while written well, seems disjointed and thrown together as though to obtain the largest reaction from the reader. A sense of cohesion is lost within the pieces. However, the imagery and themes are repeated throughout. There were three or four in a row that blurred together as they used the same language, same imagery, same theme.

It's disheartening since the first poem got me so excited! Rhyming in modern poetry has become taboo or cliche or what have you, yet Brenda did it and I was thoroughly excited for what was to come next... and what came next was centered poems that didn't feel like poems (not to mention it was one of TWO rhyming poems that I can recall). They felt like short stories chopped up, where their vital imagery was taken, and then shoved into a different carcass. Like a weird sausage. I felt like I was missing something.

I also want to touch on centered poetry. I don't know if it's a me thing (it probably is) but I really dislike centered poems, and the fact that all but like... four of these poems are centered really, really, REALLY bugs me. It sometimes felt like a cop out to use centering as a form rather than actually exploring form alongside the writing. It also made it incredibly difficult to read as my eye would jump back to the start but then I'd have to figure out if it was the right start, which often left me adding a word or two from sentence A onto sentence B, which got incredibly confusing. There were also little to no stanzas or line breaks or anything. If I had a physical copy, flipping through this would just be a thick center line of words.

Overall... I don't know. Read it for its imagery, not its cohesion?

Bestial Mouths is a collection of short poems. All of them are dark, yet beautifully written. Each one incites emotion and feels unsettling in its own way. I’m personally a fan of macabre and gruesome things, so this book was right up my alley.

I really enjoyed this collection of poems. Normally, I read collections of poetry and I am pretty unaffected by them but this collection sparked emotions within me as I was reading it. I particularly enjoyed the topics of feminism and goddesses explored within the text.

I chose this book because the cover and the description promised grotesque metamorphosis and the horrors of violent endings that look straight into your soul.

Tolin's poetry is devoted to women who suffered the most horrible fates - betrayed, violated, burried with their hopes and dreams to rot and become something completely else, something that lurks and might turn dangerous itself. The mixture of reality and myths and reallity and nightmares really helps to build up the eerie atmosphere where human beings easily turn into hungry beasts with no remorse and empathy.

It is not an easy read. I couldn't even name half of the subjects on Instagram in risk of a ban. Some of the poems I find really good. Some of them caused me nightmares for nights to come. And some of them I couldn't feel at all. My favourite are Melioë, Skinwalker Moon and Awake Now, which I find very fitting to be the last song in the book, and I almost cried after reading Eros Root, Ninava, Chrome and Melancholy.

I give it 3/5 stars.

**Thank you to NetGalley and Raw Dog Screaming Press for the eARC of this collection!**

While some of the poems in this collection really spoke to me (Jonathan Fry is easily my favorite of the bunch,) a lot of these poems just didn’t move the needle.

With the cover of this title being horrible and beautiful all at once, and the synopsis promising so much - this one just didn’t live up to my expectations. Horror poetry intrigues me and I will definitely try more of it, this was just so-so for me.

This author uses beautiful imagery and I will definitely give them a try in the future. Would love to see a novella or something with a longer format from them as I do sense an awesome voice behind the words here!

Not for me, but I definitely recommend to anyone who's interested in folk horror poetry! The poems themselves were just too fragmentary for my taste, and often endend up feeling like shopping lists of vibes.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review!

Despite being exited about a collection that stood out when it came to themes (I'm so tired of the ''break-up and then i learned to like myself :)'' kind), a majority of the poems felt disjointed. Too many line breaks, too. It made the flow of the experience suffer.

Bestial Mouths by Brenda S. Tolian is an intricately written collection of poetry that explores raw and often unsettling themes. Tolian’s vivid imagery and intense emotional depth are evident throughout the work, offering readers a haunting and thought-provoking journey. However, despite its undeniable craftsmanship, this collection ultimately didn't leave the lasting impact on me that I had hoped for.

There are certainly poems in the book that stood out—pieces that captured my attention with their intensity and beautifully dark undertones. Tolian’s ability to create atmosphere and weave language is undeniable, and those moments where the writing shines feel powerful. Yet, on the whole, I found it difficult to fully connect with the themes and emotional landscape of the collection.

While *Bestial Mouths* didn’t resonate with me personally, I can easily see how others might find this book captivating. Its rawness, complexity, and daring exploration of darker subject matter will likely appeal to readers who enjoy poetry that challenges them and pushes the boundaries of comfort.

In the end, though this collection wasn’t quite for me, I believe it could very well become a favorite for someone else. Tolian’s work is bold and evocative, and for readers who are drawn to intense emotional and thematic exploration, *Bestial Mouths* may be a deeply rewarding read.

This is a collection of dark, visceral poems that really lean on what it is to be a woman and in many a minority in America. As a half Native myself, I really felt some of these works on a deep level and a few I had to stop reading and come back to. All of this I mean in a complimentary way. Highly recommend.

A beautifully tragic compilation of what’s essentially the female rage we so love to talk about.. Brenda S. Tolian is not one to shy away from the grotesque, but rather embraces it in a way that- like the cordyceps mentioned in one of the poems- just traps you and seduces you to want more. It does touch very rough themes, and it can be quite graphic, so I advise being a bit cautious. However, it’s just my type of book, I loved it! For sure one of my favorite reads of 2024!

You can also find this review in my instagram story highlight “literature”.

Such an eclectic variety of poetry in this collection. Beautiful imagery throughout and would love to read more from this author.

Beautiful visceral poetry! I loved this so much!! Horror poetry is such an awesome genre and this author didn't disappoint!

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.