The Uterus Is an Impossible Forest
I don’t read a lot of poetry, but I was drawn to the themes in The Uterus Is an Impossible Forest by Shannon Kearns.
Reading this collection was like taking a walk through a dark, dappled forest where mushrooms grow and wild creatures populate inside and outside of us, where sunlight only rarely makes it way through the canopy. Reading of mothers and daughters and womanhood and wolves and bears and witches and selkies and loneliness and sex and loss and madness and death and at least one work inspired by The Yellow Wallpaper.
This is a volume I would keep on my shelf and dip into as the mood strikes or as inspiration demands, but some of the highlights for me were:
Harbingers, “haunted by her potential eternities”
Cave of Eggs and being a guest at a seance or in a dream
Death in XIII Parts, “blank girl risen, witch-girl rising”
A note on the digital text: I look forward to obtaining the physical version of this book as some of the formatting did not translate elegantly to the e-book version.
Thank you to NetGalley and Raw Dog Screaming Press for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review. Pub. date: 8/21/25
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