Shame is an Ocean I Swim Across by Mary Lambert - NO

Shame is an Ocean I Swim Across by Mary Lambert, 164 pages.  Feiwel and Friends (Macmillan), 2018. $14.99

Language: R (50 swears, 21 “f”); Mature Content: R; Violence: R

BUYING ADVISORY: HS – NO

AUDIENCE APPEAL: LOW

Mary Lambert lays her struggles out in the open through these poems—her struggles with body image, with depression and addictions, with PTSD from being raped. These difficult subjects are addressed openly, vulnerably, with all of the feelings they elicit.

I found these poems difficult to read, not because of subject matter but because of how they have been written and presented. Poems are meant to use emotion and words to connect poet to reader, but Lambert’s poems seemed to be more exclusive as if she wanted to keep readers out. This feeling came from the language that did not try to connect with me to help me understand, her crude language, and the inconsistency of how the poems were written. While punctuation and capitalization do not matter so much in poems, the inconsistency in how they were used confused me as I wondered if Lambert was trying to present different voices, but that didn’t seem to fit—they were just inconsistent. I only enjoyed reading five of the poems.

Reviewer: Carolina Herdegen

POETRY LGBTQIA+