I am generally a fan of stream of conscioussness style writing, but this was too disconnected for me. It's seemed so many times that a great poem had started and was suddenly an entirely different, worse poem a couple of lines later. I think if certain poems were broken into multiple, it would've allowed a deeper exploration of each metaphor, and in my opinion been more impactful. The author brings up many things that I think are beautiful and important observations, and never seems to take them as far as I hoped they'd go. 
My favorite poems were My Enemy-Friend and Issues of Genius. It was worth the read for the moments of excellent writing, but overall it was not my favorite. 

Oh no it got gross

I have mixed feelings about this book. I listened to it as an audio book, which I made it hard for me to keep track of all the characters and loose threads. That being said, I am sure I would've DNFed this in physical form because some chapters were over an hour long. I loved the story, and I found each character interesting, I just found myself being like "Wait, what? Who is talking? What's happening?" way too much. 

The end of this book is predictable by design, but I still found it anticlimactic. James never confesses, and Joan never felt fleshed out enough for it to end with her. The reason the sacrifices continued was never clear to me. It felt like I had to suspend my disbelief quite a bit as it was a clunky plot point at best. I am also not sure why the older couple or Hope were included, but maybe I just missed something there.

I genuinely did love this book overall and the opening chapter was the most beautiful opening chapter I have ever read. The prose is unique and powerful. I would recommend it with the warning that it is dense and difficult to keep track of at times.