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liralen's review
3.0
Bite sized indeed: Hamilton's memoir in poetry is a spare little thing that, in physical form, must be little more than a chapbook. (GR says that this is 168 pages, but...I think it's more like 68 pages.) It offers emotion and bare bones of what happened, but very few specific details: not her daughter's age, or how long she was in hospital, or how old she is now, or how well she's recovered. I'm not sure those details are necessary, so that's fine, but it's definitely a narrow portrait.
'anorexia/What an ugly word/anorex rex rex rexia/It wrecks ya, it wrecks ya/anorexia/It means 'loss of appetite'/which is odd/because anorexia/is the hungriest thing in the world/It can eat you alive' (loc. 96)
One thing of interest: Philip Gross, in the foreword, calls out this line: 'I trust her more/not less/for telling me/how little we know' (loc. 355) The 'her' in the line (which Gross notes!) is a medical professional, but I misread the line in the foreword as being about something Hamilton's daughter (who had anorexia) had said. Interesting to me because the line could work in either context: in the case of the professional, it refers an admission that there's only so much that doctors know about how to treat eating disorders; in the case of the patient, it could have been referring to an admission about behaviours or an explanation of some of what was going on in the patient's (child's) mind.
And another thing: as in [b:The Princess Saves Herself in This One|30075802|The Princess Saves Herself in This One (Women Are Some Kind of Magic, #1)|Amanda Lovelace|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1462211636s/30075802.jpg|50494177], which I read recently, the poems in this piece don't really stand alone. By and large, really, it's less 'poems' than it is one long poem. And yet I don't mind nearly as much here, because that aspect of it seems more...intentional? I'm not sure that's the right word, but it does feel very tight, one page leading to the next to the next.
'anorexia/What an ugly word/anorex rex rex rexia/It wrecks ya, it wrecks ya/anorexia/It means 'loss of appetite'/which is odd/because anorexia/is the hungriest thing in the world/It can eat you alive' (loc. 96)
One thing of interest: Philip Gross, in the foreword, calls out this line: 'I trust her more/not less/for telling me/how little we know' (loc. 355) The 'her' in the line (which Gross notes!) is a medical professional, but I misread the line in the foreword as being about something Hamilton's daughter (who had anorexia) had said. Interesting to me because the line could work in either context: in the case of the professional, it refers an admission that there's only so much that doctors know about how to treat eating disorders; in the case of the patient, it could have been referring to an admission about behaviours or an explanation of some of what was going on in the patient's (child's) mind.
And another thing: as in [b:The Princess Saves Herself in This One|30075802|The Princess Saves Herself in This One (Women Are Some Kind of Magic, #1)|Amanda Lovelace|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1462211636s/30075802.jpg|50494177], which I read recently, the poems in this piece don't really stand alone. By and large, really, it's less 'poems' than it is one long poem. And yet I don't mind nearly as much here, because that aspect of it seems more...intentional? I'm not sure that's the right word, but it does feel very tight, one page leading to the next to the next.
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