Review: "Eating at Me" compiled by Rain Maddin

Eating at Me, compiled by Rain Maddin
Published December 2023
★★

Short compilation* of themed poetry. I’m reminded a little of a publication scam (not calling this book a scam, but bear with me) that was going around when I was a tween—you’d submit a poem at no cost, and a couple of weeks later you’d get a letter saying “Wow! We loved your poem! We want to publish it! You can buy a copy of the book we publish it in for $20!” If you sent off the money, they’d send you in return a book packed with hundreds if not thousands of poems, all in tiny print and multiple poems to the page. (I did not do this, but I knew at least one person who did.) Perhaps “scam” is an overstatement—you did get the book, after all, and your poem was technically published. It’s just that quality control wasn’t really a thing, and if you went back and read your poem years later you’d probably cringe and be grateful that the only other people who bought the book were highly likely to be other contributors who were only interested in their own poems and had never read yours.

At a guess, the average age of the contributors for Eating at Me is about 13; there’s a heavy reliance on shaky rhymes, and no proofreading was involved (My body is so sheik, p. 55). I expect that some of these contributors will go on to write, and perhaps publish, more complex things, and I hope these poems were cathartic to write, but as it is the book just isn’t doing it for me.

*Cover says "by", but "edited by" or "compiled by" would be more accurate.