Author: Fariha Róisín
Rating: 4 stars / 5 stars
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Favorite Quote: “I look like my mother, / There’s still grief in that, / Grief because when I sigh, / I exhale her.” Róisín, Fariha. Survival Takes a Wild Imagination. Andrew McMeel Publishing, 2023.
Review: Thank you to the publisher, Andrew McMeel Publishing, and the NetGalley platform, for the free e-ARC I received in exchange for an honest review.
Poetry is often (fairly) considered a somewhat inaccessible genre, its layers of metaphoric language alienating readers who struggle to determine the meaning of each word, line, or stanza. I am one of those readers.
And yet - Survival Takes a Wild Imagination, while at times probably going over my head, manages to capture some of life’s moments and feelings so viscerally that even a relative poetry newbie can’t help but be swept up in its evocative language.
Róisín takes special care to examine issues of political unrest and revolution, self-discovery, what it means to exist in a female body, strained relationships between mothers and daughters, and the conflicts that categorize (unhealthy?) interpersonal relationships.
About that Quote: One of the themes throughout this collection is the strained relationship between the narrator and their mother. This quote not only captures that, but also the complicated feelings that arise from that particular brand of relationship. Here is a narrator who is at times resentful and angry (as seen in other poems), but who grieves both at the thought of being inhabited by their mother but also at the thought of breathing her out/expelling her. I may not be a poetry expert, but gosh, that did give me chills.
Have you read Survival Takes a Wild Imagination? Share your thoughts below!
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