Rating: 3.5/5

First, I would like to thank the author (@spdevsmithwriter on IG) for sending me her book for an honest review. This was a humbling experience and a first for me. At the same time, this does not impact my thoughts on her collection in any way. 

 “The Butterfly Bruises” is Palmer Smith’s first work. It’s a collection of poems and short stories and contains an ambitious number of themes, including love, heartbreak, life’s winding roads, mental and physical health, and finding magic in the mundane. 

I truly enjoyed the nature poems (“Ladybug”), the fantastical ones (“Relief” and “Collisions”), and especially the ones about mental and physical health because I’ve had my fare share of battles with both. From the short stories, “Puzzle Pieces” was my favorite. This one caught me off guard and I actually wished it was longer. I wanted to know more about the narrator, his possible stalking habit, and how he handled the aftermath of the end. (Not spoiling it for you, but, let’s just say that life’s one crazy puzzle.) 

However, while there were several pieces I enjoyed, there were also several that I could not connect with due to subject matter or style. A few times, a poem would suddenly shift in perspective and go from the second or third person to the first point of view, with no real connection to what had been set up before. To me, this felt disjointed and resulted in a jarring break from the extended metaphor and overall flow of the poem. There were also a few times when I felt the stories did more “telling” rather than “showing” and I kept looking for more sensory details to ground me in the piece. 

Nevertheless, Palmer Smith has such a way with words. Many poems felt more like word-experiences, where the point wasn’t clear but it didn’t matter because the imagery was just so beautiful. “The Butterfly Bruises” is a truly personal collection that engages the mind and heart, and I look forward to seeing what Smith writes next.