Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! This collection releases in the US from Graywolf Press on September 30th, 2024.

The Hormone of Darkness: A Playlist is a mesmerizing and surreal collection of poetry by Peruvian poet Tilsa Otta, translated into English by Farid Matuk. Spanning work published between 2004 and 2018, this bilingual collection pulls readers into a world where beginnings and endings blur, and autonomy is reclaimed in the face of social and existential constraints. Otta’s poems chafe against boundaries—whether they are imposed by society, God, or the speaker’s own sense of self—creating space for new forms of desire, love, and resistance.

Otta’s poetry is wildly experimental, dreamlike, and often deeply abstract, with a rhythm that carries the reader through fragmented reflections on life, pleasure, and grief. There’s a raw beauty in her vivid imagery, which invites us to question reality and meaning while feeling deeply the weight of human experience. The collection doesn’t shy away from the bizarre or the kinky; instead, it fully embraces queerness, both in identity and form, pushing the boundaries of what poetry can be. Themes of existential questioning and the tension between the material and spiritual worlds recur throughout, with a constant undercurrent of yearning for freedom.

However, the collection’s abstract nature occasionally left me lost in its tangled thoughts. At times, the poems’ resistance to conventional narrative made it difficult to find an entry point. Still, this only reinforces the collection's relentless desire for expansiveness, reflecting the speaker's ongoing struggle for hope and autonomy. Though challenging, The Hormone of Darkness is an evocative exploration of queerness, creativity, and rebellion, leaving readers with more questions than answers—just as it should. Overall, I rated it 3.5 stars for its bold experimentation, even if some poems felt a little too abstract to fully connect with.

📖 Recommended For: Readers who enjoy surreal, experimental poetry, those interested in exploring the fluidity of identity and desire, anyone who values boundary-pushing, queer narratives, fans of Anne Carson.

🔑 Key Themes: Autonomy and Rebellion, Existential Questioning, Queerness and Identity, Desire and Pleasure, Transcendence and Spirituality.