I didn’t know what to think when I started to read this book. It’s not my usual genre.
I was pleasantly surprised by this book. The words flowed and it was beautifully written.
It was an emotional read about grief and I had all the feels.
Thank you

In Corpse beneath the crocus we are living through grief and all the different aspects of it. I resonated strongly with a lot of the prose and I overall liked the experience of reading this book. There were just a few poems that threw me off which made the emotional connection to the poems a little bit compromised.

I was not a fan of the way these were written. I couldn't connect to the poems or feel them. Personally for me this didn't gel.

I wasn’t sure what to think before I requested this book. I’m glad I took the jump. This was a very emotional read for me, it opened up so many feelings and some sadness. This is what I want out of poetry. I want to feel something and this author did amazing!

This collection of poems broke my heart. The words that the author chose to express all the emotions that we can feel when faced with grief are accurate, her testimony is poignant and I think it can help many people.
I preferred the texts that were longer, I found that the words were more thoughtful and that made the whole thing much more moving. I was a little less hooked on the poems that were shorter, I find that some were a bit repetitive at times.

Rating: 3/5 stars

“I am haunted, by the ghost of the future I wanted”

Corpse Beneath the Crocus is N.N. Nelsons debut collection of modern poetry, written as an exorcism of her own grief after the death of her husband in 2018. It grapples with the topic of grief; from how it manifests in mundane and daily details, to the greater ripples it sends through all of our lives. As such it feels like a very personal collection to the author, which always makes it difficult to review it as an outsider.
When it comes to poetry, more so than any other genre, I look for a combination of the beauty of the text in itself, as well as an emotional connection to it. This collection, as is often the case with modern poetry for me, was a mixed bag of that. What I loved in particular was the scope of grief it describes; from the sometimes unbearable weight of trying to fathom concepts like “never”, to the small losses, like an indent on a mattress when the person who left it is gone. My two favourite poems were Marionette and September 27th, which I think captured that beautifully.
What brought the collection down a bit, was that it poses relatable feelings and experiences, but never words them in a way that I haven’t seen or thought before. Therefore, although I enjoyed my time with it, I didn’t feel like I gained anything from this collection after finishing it.

I’ve also come to realize that I personally don’t enjoy swearing and expletives in my (modern) poetry. I’m not opposed to swearing; I do it quite a lot in day-to-day-life and don’t mind an occasional swearword in my fiction to emphasize strong emotion, but I’m noticing that lines like;
“ No luck, fuck, this shit can suck
my metaphysical dick and nuts.”
feel out of place and unintentionally laughable to me in my poetry.

Many thanks to Atmosphere Press and Netgalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atmosphere Press for my arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

N.N. Nelson's poetry collection, "Corpse Beneath the Crocus", we are taken through Nelson's journey of grief and metamorphosis in the form of poetry and some prose. I will start off with the fact that poetry is not one of my strengths; I've always struggled with reading modern poetry and have always struggled with modern poetry in general (my expertise and desire for poetry starts and stops with the British Romantics). That said, I loved this collection. A lot. It's very rare that a poetry collection speaks to me (the last being by Su Cho from last year) and this absolutely spoke to me.

As I said, this collection deals primarily with grief and how to continue living in the absence of a loved one taken by death and it's based off of Nelson's own experiences with losing her husband to cancer. I am a very emotional person and found myself crying often throughout this collection. Nelson does a beautiful job of expressing her frustration, sadness, anger, and closure about her husband's passing. As I've tended to find most modern poetry emotionless and cold, I was surprised to find the emotion I did find in Nelson's writing. There were certainly a lot of stand-out poems that completely took my breath away with their raw vulnerability, honesty, and relatability. Like I had said previously, I cried A LOT reading this due to Nelson's ability to effectively communicate her pain, loss, and confusion at the absence of her husband. I couldn't help but relate.

I highly recommend this collection. It's a tough read but very worth it.

Stand-Out Poems: Nonsense Thoughts, September 27th, Love Letter (this and the previous selection had me bawling), I Am Not Her Anymore, Motherhood, Twat, Living Hell, and S**t (uncensored in book).

Utterly heartbreaking. The author's grief bleeds through the page. I wonder if you can truly appreciate this book if you haven't lost someone? I really don't know but I have and it resonated strongly with me. I'll be thinking about this for quite some time. My particular favorite was early on in the collection with "Rage". I felt it very deeply. The writing style is one I think is accessible to all, even those who don't typically read poetry. I deeply enjoyed this and I hope to see more from N.N. Nelson.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atmosphere Press for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I am no expert on poetry, I don't read a lot of it. But to me, poetry is supposed to make you FEEL something. With this collection of poetry, N.N. Nelson really makes you feel her crushing heartbreak, despair and how lost she felt after her husband passed away. Her poem entitled "Love Letter" was especially powerful in my opinion.