Beautiful Malady: Poems

When I responded to an email asking me if I would like a physical copy of this book to review, I quickly said yes because the tagline of “queerness, disability, and myth” caught my eye. I wasn't aware that it was poetry until I had the book in my hands, but that didn't lower my enjoyment overall! I'm not normally a person who seeks out poetry (mostly because I just don't understand it a lot of the time) so I was looking forward to the challenge this would bring. Surprising myself, I flew through this. The poems never went over my head and I was able to sit with the themes of every poem and fully understand what the author's intentions were. This was definitely an exploration of queerness, disability, and myth but it's also more than that. The author pulled from their own experiences of disability in a way that was heartwrenching and their own queerness in a way that feels close to home. A few poems stood out more than others to me, but overall I enjoyed the experience of reading this short collections of poems. The reason I am not leaving a star rating is simply because I wish the poems told an overall story, but that is completely my own preference. If I were to rate it for my own preferences, that would be unfair to the representation and the author's work. That being said, I would rate it a 4 if what I want didn't bring my enjoyment down.






Thank you to Intersteller Flight Press for providing me with an ARC copy to review

Beautiful Malady rips off the bandages and lets you see beyond the cover of politeness, society, and “the rules” to the raw feelings underneath. I love it for its honesty and the fact that it made me uncomfortable. It made me think. Art is supposed to do this and Bashe has created one heck of a Beautiful Malady.

Check out the rest of my review at Mx. Phoebe's Viewpoint. Link in bio.


I received an ARC of this book and I am writing a review without prejudice and voluntarily.