For my 2020 reading challenge, I had the category “A Complete Volume of Poetry by a Single Author.” While I love poetry, I never read books of poems until my senior year of college when I took Contemporary Poetry.

Since I didn’t have any poetry collections available that I hadn’t already read, I decided to choose ones that were in circulation at the library I work at. During my lunch, I went over to the Literature section, and I picked through the different poetry collections. From the four that I picked up, I settled on “Depression & Other Magic Tricks” by Sabrina Benaim.

I’m a big fan of Button Poetry, and Sabrina Benaim embraces it. Just like with many Button Poems, they worked much better being read out loud and performed rather than just read in my head.

While the poems in this book weren’t life changing or had a major impact on me, I enjoyed reading them.

The poem the author uses at the beginning, “First Date,” serves as a great introduction to who she is, and how her mind works. It immediately captivated me, and I was eager to read more.

However, as I continued to the read the collection, only a few of the poems stood out to me. The rest were “just okay.”

My favorite poem in the collection was “explaining my depression to my mother a conversation.” In this poem, she not only explains how depression affects her, but also how sometimes people can’t relate or understand what depression does.

Other poems in the collection addresses her depression, as well as the different people and events in her life.

Overall, I gave this book a 3/5 stars.