Sexting Ghosts by Joanna C. Valente

Sexting Ghosts Reviews

• 
  KRISTINE SLENTZ

  Is it cliché to say something is haunting when ghost is in the title? Probably and I do not care. Sexting Ghosts inches its way underneath your comforter during witching hour to blankly stare dead in your face – and you love every moment of turning into an exquisite corpse yourself. If you’re looking to relate more (maybe even fall in love) with the rotten portions of your eternal being, this is the chapbook for you. Best times to read this collection is either while eating ice cream or during a communing-with-the-living ritual.
• 
  Eleanore

  I'm finding lately that, more often than not, the general style of most contemporary poetry at the moment is just not something that works well for me, often not at all. That said, there are two very solid essays at the back of the book ("Suicidal Ideation and Who We Allow to Be Real" and "The Barbaric Silencing of Transgender and Non-Binary People: It's Not Just Dangerous, It's Inhumane"), which are of genuine quality (though they could use a more solid copy edit). These pieces at the back get the extra star on their own, but that's the only section of this one that really were something I could connect with.
• 
  Brian

  Great to see another woman's voice that doesn't conform to the predominating paradigm of male/academic authorship, which has been challenged with quantitative significance over the past decade or so. This being said, the poetics of the millennial are hard to get away with, but SG does a great job of personalizing Joanna's position in the world as mutually exclusive from and yet at the same time inextricably tied to Today's emotions and mores, as related to both Joanna and the world - and isn't paradox one of literature's axioms?
• 
  Emily Polson

  "when I asked if
  you believed
  in
  ghosts
  I meant, do you believe in yourself?
  Do you believe in your grandmother's kitchen
  the smell of zucchini bread
  the desire for emptiness,
  to purge everything and start over again
  like you never existed even though I trace
  your outline in the dark."
  -A Tale of Two Worlds

  
  Other favorites:
  
  -Mother
  -Grandmother
  -God of Sounds Talks After a Hiatus
  -God of Thunder Divorces God of Lightning
  -God of Air
  -God of Loneliness
• 
  Jennifer

  The poems in Sexting Ghosts by Joanna C. Valente, wonderfully explores the intersections of relationships and technology. I was particularly struck by how the poems deals with the technology/modernity while also dealing with the archetypal/mythical.
• 
  M.A. Grant

  Enjoyed a handful of poems, but the essays at the end were by far the most impactful and moving parts of this collection for me.