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<b><i>"And it has made you bitter/to know pomegranates led you here"</i></b>

Like all good readers, it was the title and the cover of this collection that first drew me in, and the first line that kept me. The opening poem, "I Hear You're Sick of Pomegranates", is the perfect set-up for the rest of the collection, a lyrical, nearly confrontational compendium of beauty and violence, a reclaiming of a religious narrative and a rejection of it all at once, and it contains, in my humble opinion, some of the most hard-hitting lines throughout the entire collection. 

McDermott skillfully treads the line between folklore and reality, connecting women across ages and eras through a heavy history of tender violences rolled sharp and sweet into verse that weaves and winds like a folklore in itself. Here, you, the reader, are acting as witness to the meeting of a strange court, one that trades in memory and imagination, fraught with the speaker's distinct lexicon spilled across each page, a voice that is sure of itself and all the more impactful for it.

Never has a title been quite so apt than that of this collection, either, as the poems often read as self-contained spell, rituals, recipes with strange ingredients, a myriad of plant life taking root within the pages, nature mixing with verse as dark and unflinching as any fairytale that inspires it. Words rot and bloom from piece to piece; a similar ache prevalent throughout, one that ties the collection together more than its thematic components, though these do as well.

In my mind, it is best to read this collection curled beneath the roots of the oldest tree one can find, damp ground beneath your feet, clouded sky overhead, in order to truly capture the full breadth of the words and their emotions. McDermott's voice here is substantive, lyrical, unflinching, and above all, deeply evocative, whether of a story, spell, long-forgotten memory. The poetry here experiments with form to great success, crafting a nearly speculative, mutable narrative that lingers long after the collection has ended.

<b><i>"You know that you would take//the fruit greedily, piece by piece,/and devour it,/if it were only offered by some soft hand."</i></b>

If it wasn't clear, I was in love with this collection from start to finish, and I cannot wait to read more from this author!

If you'd like to explore this work for yourself, you can grab a copy at [The Spiral Bookcase](https://spiralbookcase.com/products/the-spellbook-of-fruit-and-flowers-christine-butterworth-mcdermott?_pos=1&_sid=20065ccac&_ss=r), my local indie.

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