Thanks to NetGalley and Graywolf Press for the ARC!

Ariana Reines’s "The Rose" is a collection of love(?) poems that would reward analysis more than reading.

The book has an interesting premise—essentially, how does one reconcile the idea of love with the reality of power? Is this power inherently problematic, or is it simply just the way life is?

In one early poem, we read about how the speaker suppresses their desire to be hurt out because of the cultural emphasis on self-respect. Poems later, we see this sentiment inverted with the admission that the speaker's masochism is simply misplaced boredom in light of the evil in the world.

This kind of nuanced vulnerability is rewarding, and I wish it were more prominent throughout the book. While moments like this recur, they are buried deep in the kind of esoteric poetry that feels designed for analysis in graduate seminars. It's mechanical and mathematical. Frankly, the form feels largely incongruous with the collection’s themes, but I think this tension may have felt productive in a chapbook with a tighter edit.

"The Rose" has an author blurb from Jenny Zhang, and readers of "My Baby First Birthday" may recognize a kinship between the gross-out crassness of that book and this one. Unfortunately, where Zhang demonstrates precision in her perversity, the voice at work here feels generally unfocused, the volume so constantly elevated that it loses all dimension.

As a final note, and one that is entirely personal yet perhaps relevant for interested readers, "The Rose" is just not the kind of poetry that sits well in this sociopolitical climate. Violent sex and jouissance through masc-coded language don’t feel transgressive or satirical when every political act in the headlines seems to celebrate male-driven violence. It’s not the poet’s fault that the collection would have landed differently if it were released six months earlier, but for readers who feel fatigued by the world, this collection may be one to avoid for a while.

I did like quite a few of the pieces in this collection but ultimately this was not for me. I never feel right criticizing poems in any negative way as what might not work for me, could very well work for someone else. With that being said, I would definitely recommend giving it a try!

Thank you so much for the ARC!

I went back and forth with "The Rose." Reines is a talented writer and this collection is reflective, playful, and unabashedly unafraid to pull punches. Some poems left me with irritation, finding the subject of the "man hating woman" to be overplayed. Other poems took me on a journey of self-reflection through gender ideology, sensuality, and grief. It's a hard book to pin down. There's a lot I liked, for example: Reines look at the role of society as it interacts through sex and romance to keep us apart or bring us together is poignant and refreshing. On the other hand, portions of the collection rely on the misandry/misogyny of broken relationships and that (while it's definitely satire) may go over heads.

Overall, I'd recommend this for poetry lovers looking for a new perspective in the themes of romance and relationships, especially when tied to societal pressures and norms.

My favorite poems are: "Divinity School", "Bitch", and "The Hanged Man."

The Rose by Ariana Reines is a reflective work of poetry that breaks down the romance trope to its most basic shapes and colors. Unfortunately the work fell flat for me, working only at the surface level. I would not recommend this book.