Reviews

Hypermobilities by Ellen Samuels

butteredgarbage's review

emotional reflective fast-paced

5.0

ryanlee's review

challenging reflective medium-paced

courtneyfalling's review

emotional informative reflective fast-paced

4.5

I love these haikus, and I love Ellen Samuels's notes and explanations! There's a moment toward the end of her interview when she says, "I have this dream that some people with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome will read this book and find that it speaks to their experience, that it makes them feel less alone." And it filled me with a lot of teariness and somehow happy grief to sit there as a younger person, a younger activist, a younger writer with hypermobile EDS, feeling less alone and witnessing Ellen Samuels feel less alone. I think I've come across and liked some of her previous scholarly work (via her friendship and collaboration with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha), and I definitely plan to check out more of her writing!

My favorite poems:

• Hypermobility
• At the Doctor's Offices
• Magnetic Resonance Angiogram of the Head and Neck with Contrast 
• Vertebral Artery Dissection
• Superficial Phlebitis 
• Autosomal Dominant Inheritance 
• Displacement of the First Rib 
• Harvesting Carrots
• Basically all of the notes and interview

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content

dramaqueentears's review

challenging emotional tense fast-paced

5.0

I read the entire book, then after I read “Notes on Writing Hypermobilities,” I went back reread the poetry. I think you should read it too. I’ve always thought Ellen Samuels is such an incredible writer, but the haiku is even more remarkable once you’ve read that part.

This book of haiku is about Ellen Samuels’s experience with Ehler-Danlos Syndrome. She describes it as poetry that began at her first MRI and continued throughout her journey with chronic illness. It’s such a valuable piece of art and I wish more people wrote poetry about disability.