Review: Honeybee - Trista Mateer

Honeybee
Trista Mateer
Series: N/A
Genre: Poetry
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
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If you saw my Stuffed Animal Saturday last month, you'd know I was reading Honeybee, a poetry collection by the lovely Trista Mateer. Where we last left off, I told you I hadn't had time to read besides between classes and had only gotten a small fraction of the book done. Well, soon after that, I decided to avoid all my responsibilities and just devour the rest of the book in one sitting because it was just so phenomenal. It didn't take too long. At 99 pages, the book is easy to breeze through and light enough to carry around whenever you need a good dose of heavy poetry.

I've been following Trista Mateer on Tumblr for quite some time, which is how I found out she had a book out, and so I had seen glimpses of some of the poems before, but seeing all the new ones and seeing everything presented in the order and manner it was, was a very powerful reading experience.

The writing was evocative, full of Mateer's personal insights and experiences. The way she incorporated herself into her poetry while still making it relatable to those reading was one of the aspects I appreciated most. She put so much of herself into her writing but, as a reader, I was also able to put so much of myself into the words too. A lot of the poems resonated with me on a personal level and reading those was such an excellent experience because I could feel her words pulling at my experiences and expressing them in ways I hadn't thought to. Even the poems I couldn't necessarily relate to personally still struck a chord with me.

She also wrote with very well-crafted words and phrases and there were so many lines that stuck out to me and not only hit home but that I thought were just overall good writing. Some of my favorite lines include:

"I swear I am no longer looking for ways to apologize to the hungry parts of you that I could never satiate." - LOUD, LOUD, LOUD (pg 88) 

"Sometimes I think I might always have a little bit of you stuck in my teeth, you might always have a little of my heart on your sleeve." - EMILY (pg. 77) 

"You cannot build your home like a house of cards / in the mouth of a lover who breathes too hard at night." - ASK YOUR MOTHER ABOUT SALIVATION; ASK YOUR MOTHER ABOUT STARVING (pg. 73) 

I could list my favorite poems from the book but that would be an exceptionally difficult task and I don't think I'm quite up to the challenge. Overall, I think it's an excellently crafted piece of work and I would recommend her book to anyone looking for poetry to read, whether it's for emotional rebounding or just for pure entertainment value.

- Noor

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