Review: We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite by Conyer Clayton

In her debut collection of poetry, Conyer Clayton hovers in the ether, grasping for certitude in often wrong places. Through experiences with addiction and co-dependence, sex and art, nature and death, she grapples for transcendence while exploring what it means to disengage. What is revealed when you allow yourself to truly feel? What do you ask for to carry you into life, and where do you land when this fails? And when you are finally, beautifully, emptied out, who are you? The poems in We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite wonder aloud amidst tangled revelations, and yearn to be lifted away.
I really enjoyed the themes throughout this book but I did find some of the poems hard to understand. I couldn’t decipher what some of them meant and they seemed pretty abstract to me. I’m not super well versed in poetry and I only casually read poetry so maybe someone with more knowledge than me would understand them. Other than that, I thought this collection was beautiful and creative and I really enjoyed reading it.

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