My first Maggie Nelson couldn’t have been a better choice. I loved the formatting of this book and I loved how I was able to really dwell on each line. The longer it’s been since I read this book the more I enjoy it.

3.5 stars. A very innovative structure for a sort of memoir meets narrative nonfiction—a mix of diary entries, poetry, and excerpts from the murder case documents. This lent it a meditative quality, but at times the abstractness made it feel…empty? Maybe that’s too harsh, but this is very much about the feeling and not the fact, and I wanted more of the latter (even though that was likely not Nelson’s point with this).

Maggie Nelson pushed this to the limit, and then she blew right past it. This little book is part prose, part poetry, part true crime, part diary. Part elegy, part conversation between the living and the dead. It’s genre-busting and it goes beyond what I thought poetry could do. It’s pain finding a way to find a form, and it spoke right to my senses.

A strong four and a half stars that I’m deciding to round up because I hate poetry and I think this made me like it.

Also, if you like this, check out Claudia Rankine’s [b:Citizen: An American Lyric|20613761|Citizen An American Lyric|Claudia Rankine|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1420944502l/20613761._SX50_.jpg|39895091].