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thalconthemme's review against another edition
fast-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child abuse and Pedophilia
alj24's review against another edition
It's a matter of personal preference: I don't love the "scattershot" poems that wind from topic to topic and don't seem to land everywhere. No thanks.
haleyshealy's review
5.0
The way she looks at the world in these poems is so unique and so enchanting.
kawai's review
4.0
Unstable relationships, disaffection with a modern (urban) lifestyle, and mortality: those seem to be the primary focus of EMERGENCY BRAKE. Madievsky plumbs her themes fiercely, and the poems delivered resonated with me across almost the entirety of the collection--a rarity for poetry collections I've read. There are probably a variety of reasons for my reaction, not all of which I understand, but if I had to guess it would be because of her restrained style: It's prose poetry that finds the middle ground between poetry and prose, not fully eschewing either (my favorite style, as a reader); she's also taken care to craft pointed metaphors to explain feelings, and since the metaphors worked well for me, it was just one more reason to love the work. And because her subject matter, although approached from the personal, is accessible for the average reader (rather than abstraction or philosophical underpinnings that take unbearable effort to dig up), the poems were relatable and ultimately moving.
If there's any weakness in the collection, it's that Madievsky's thematic focus feels so narrow that, at times, the poems seem to retrace ground already covered. But, given how well she does it, there's nothing wrong with experiencing *nearly* identical thoughts multiple times, at least not for this reader.
On the whole, a very strong collection from a poet who (I'm guessing) is just getting started. Highly recommended.
If there's any weakness in the collection, it's that Madievsky's thematic focus feels so narrow that, at times, the poems seem to retrace ground already covered. But, given how well she does it, there's nothing wrong with experiencing *nearly* identical thoughts multiple times, at least not for this reader.
On the whole, a very strong collection from a poet who (I'm guessing) is just getting started. Highly recommended.
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