Book Review: What We Lost in the Swamp by Grant Chemidlin

This will probably be a short review, because What We Lost in the Swamp by Grant Chemidlin is a short book, and because I’m bad at writing about poetry.

According to the back cover, this is a “collection of poems that examines the many manifestations of green.” Well hey, that’s my kind of thing. Green is not only my favorite color, I like a lot of things that are green, like plants. But this book also explores metaphorically green things, like jealousy and inexperience.

This is a small collection but it still explores a lot of themes within that loose category of “manifestations of green” and employs a variety of poetic techniques, none of which I know the names for.

Chemidlin is a queer poet and this book does explore themes of coming out, gay romance, and masculinity. However, it only has one brief mention of sexuality on the outside cover, so it’s a good choice if you need to sneak some gay poetry past a disapproving family member or read it discreetly on the bus in a red state or something.

This feels like a good collection to share with teens, as it does have a few poems about figuring yourself out when you’re young, as well as some more hopeful poems about being in (gay) love, which could be a source of optimism for young queer folks wondering what the future holds for them. There are a couple of heavier poems especially around themes of mental health and self doubt, so consider reading through the collection first if you’re thinking of sharing it with a kid who is struggling, but in general I found this to be the least heavy of the adult poetry collections I’ve read these past few years.

Over all, while there were a couple of poems I enjoyed in here, I don’t feel like the collection made a big impact on me, so I don’t think I’d recommend it for someone who is “meh” on poetry like me, unless you need to read poetry for a challenge, in which case, this book is a breezy 81 pages long and the poems are not challenging, so you’re in for an easy read where you might find one or two things that speak to you.

CWs and TWs: Mentions of homophobia, mental illness, animal death.

Source and format: We purchased this paperback at Charlie’s Queer Books.

Reading Challenge Prompts

Nook & Cranny (Card 2): Feeling Poetic. This book didn’t inspire a lot of poetic feelings in me, but at least the author was feeling poetic. Wait, do we call poets authors?

Brick & Mortar: Genre Out of Your Comfort Zone. My comfort zone is pretty broad when it comes to reading; I’ll read almost any genre if the subject matter appeals to me or if a review from someone I respect makes it sound good to me. But as established in last year’s review of Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, I generally only read one poetry book a year. Since I got this one done early, we’ll see if the SAL/SPL challenge makes me read a second poetry book.

Physical TBR. My spouse bought this last year, so it counts for the physical TBR challenge! For this book, I chose to donate to the Queer Liberation Library, an online library that allows anyone in the US to borrow queer books via Libby. They don’t appear to currently have What We Lost in the Swamp in their collection, but they do have 150 other queer poetry books. I think this is such a great idea for a library and I suspect this won’t be the only time I donate to them this year. Visit the post for my Physical TBR Challenge to keep track of which books I’ve read and which causes I’ve donated to.

Reading Challenge Progress

Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 6 of 25, no bingos.

Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 9 of 25, 1 bingo!

Book Riot: 10 of 25.

Physical TBR: 3 of 12.

Brick & Mortar: 21 of 25, 4 bingos*.
*I’ve completed several of the non-reading prompts, hence the mismatch with the number of reviews!

World of Whimm: 10 of 24, no bingos.