Review of hortus animarum by Sienna Tristen
Sienna Tristen’s hortus animarum: a new herbal for the queer heart (Frog Hollow Press, 2022; reprinted 2024) is a gorgeous chapbook of plant-related prose poetry with numerous queer themes running through them.
While I was a little surprised to find all of the poems in this collection were prose poetry (with the exception of the table of contents, formatted as poetry with line breaks, which was delightfully clever), once I had read the first few, the format felt perfectly natural for this collection. Poems like “violet” and “lilac, wreathed” took me back to my own childhood memories of those plants, which grew in abundance on either side of our house. I also loved “aloe,” for its gentle repetition in the final line, and “birch,” for its twist of a final line. In fact, many of the poems really sang for me with their final lines–“white bindweed” was another one with an absolute perfect conclusion.
This chapbook is a quick read, but the poems and their associated plants and themes will linger with you long after finishing, and some poems are likely to call you back to them time and again. Even for those who don’t generally find chapbooks of poetry on their reading list, it’s worthwhile to check out hortus animarum to see just what can be done in this medium!
While the Kickstarter that funded the reprinting of this chapbook is over, you can reach Sienna Tristen via Instagram if you’re interested in your own copy of hortus animarum!
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