Everything Reminds You of Something Else

Thoughtful! Amazing! Lovely! I really enjoyed it and I totally recommend it!

Everything Reminds You of Something Else by Elana Wolff is a deeply evocative collection of poetry. The bulk of the pieces are meaningful and vivid. While there were some pieces that I didn't fully understand (I've only recently started reading poetry for 'leisure'), this is definitely a strong collection that made me contemplate a lot of things. The humanities and social sciences nerd in me especially loved the Kafka references! My favourite pieces were Rain, Air, Meridian, Elemental and Walking Song. My absolute favourite was Metamorphoses, and is something I will carry with me for a long time:
"Some are born human, most have to humanize slowly.
I want to say I'm on my way"

Everything Reminds You of Something Else by Elana Wolff is the poet’s fifth solo collection of poetry. Wolff is a Toronto-based poet, essayist, translator, and creator and facilitator of therapeutic art courses. She has taught English for Academic Purposes at York University in Toronto and at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Wolff’s poetry taps deep into the reader’s imagination. Words roll off the tongue and pass an almost dream like a vision. Alliteration and words that change in small degrees lead to leaps and jumps in meanings. Sometimes the words are fun and sometimes they induce a psychedelic journey. Not a drug induced Jim Morrison journey, but an intellectual, thinking journey into complex word masterpiece.


In the deep field where the spool people’s
old moon sometimes succeeds in moving
bog waters in June—to flow over
wan weeds and make them gleam, we meet
“Spool”

I felt for a while the sky was mine: the moon
the stars, the indigo wind; suns pale circle
rising at the horizon
“Meridian”

I was slaked like a calf at the teat last night,
perhaps because the stars were low,
so low their leaky light suffused the garden.
“Ouija Board”


Wolff weaves together themes of seasons, the moon, and the solstice. There is a primitiveness in the view of nature in many of the poems. The reader learns we are made of a combination of stardust and rain. Our complexity comes from the basic materials of nature; we are more than the sum of ingredients and poetry is much more than the sum of the words. A deep and enjoyable collection of poetry.

This book is full of beautiful poetry, which I really want to get into this year. So this is my second book, and I still have so much to learn about it, so I'm in no way an expert to poetry.

But I really liked the writing, all these poems were so beautiful written and reading them, I just had the greatest time and really enjoyed every single page.

I just didn't really connect with any of the poems. There wasn't one that really stuck with me, that I want to reread over and over again. That's making me a bit sad.

But still, I highly recommend this book, cause even though I didn't connect with the words, I'm sure lots of other people will. And have I mentioned how beautiful written these poems are?!

Throughout this book Wolff explored different parts of life and how everything correlates with the something else. A quaint, little book with some beautiful hidden meanings.

Everything Reminds You of Something Else is a collection of poetry that focuses on relationships, how we view them, the connections between people and how our experiences can change the light in which we view our relationships. I found this a quick and interesting read.