Rating: 3.75 Stars
Release Date: June 20, 2023
Format: Ebook
Publisher: Tin House Books
About the Book:
Restless, contradictory, and witty, Megan Fernandes’ I Do Everything I’m Told explores disobedience and worship, longing and possessiveness, and nights of wandering cities. Its poems span thousands of miles, as a masterful crown of sonnets starts in Shanghai, then moves through Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Lisbon, Palermo, Paris, and Philadelphia—with a speaker who travels solo, adventures with strangers, struggles with the parameters of sexuality, and speculates on desire.
Review:
Separated into four sections this collection of poems navigates the terrain of queer, normative, and ambiguous intimacies with intelligence and care. Each section focuses either on a theme or type of poem and this is done beautifully. Megan speaks about love, cities, transformations in life and how we react to what's going on in the world and our lives.
The poems are grounded in real cities, a lovely collection of inspiring and vivid poems. I enjoyed how the sonnets each focused on a specific city and evoked the feeling you get with travel and what Megan was feeling/experiencing at that specific moment. She transported you into her life and experience in such a unique way.
Poems I connected with:
Paris Poem without Cliches
Shanghai Sonnet
Rilke
Sonnet for the Unbearable
There is such passion in a short collection, the poems I connected with I really connected with while the others I could take or leave. I know they all worked together to tell the story of the author's life, prose has such a variety that there will be some that will heavily connect and others not so much.
Final Thoughts: If you are just getting into poetry I would not recommend this as a first collection, the poems are great just more difficult for a beginner. Overall, a wonderful collection just more intense topics and techniques in this collection than others.
Disclaimer: Thank you Netgalley and Tin House Books for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
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