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Couplets: A Love Story
“An astounding debut.”
—Adrienne Raphel, The New York Times Book Review
A dazzling love story in poems about one woman’s coming-out, coming-of-age, and coming undone
A woman lives an ordinary life in Brooklyn. She has a boyfriend. They share a cat. She writes poems in the prevailing style. She also has of being seduced by a throng of older women, of kissing a friend in a dorm-room closet. But the dreams are private, not real.
One night, she meets another woman at a bar, and an escape hatch swings open in the floor of her life. She falls into a consuming affair—into queerness, polyamory, kink, power and loss, humiliation and freedom, and an enormous surge of desire that lets her leave herself behind.
Maggie Millner’s captivating, seductive debut is a love story in poems that explores obsession, gender, identity, and the art and act of literary transformation. In rhyming couplets and prose vignettes, Couplets chronicles the strictures, structures, and pitfalls of relationships—the mirroring, the pleasing, the small jealousies and disappointments—and how the people we love can show us who we truly are.
"An endlessly inventive, wise, exhilarating book.”
—Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness and What Belongs to You
—Adrienne Raphel, The New York Times Book Review
A dazzling love story in poems about one woman’s coming-out, coming-of-age, and coming undone
A woman lives an ordinary life in Brooklyn. She has a boyfriend. They share a cat. She writes poems in the prevailing style. She also has of being seduced by a throng of older women, of kissing a friend in a dorm-room closet. But the dreams are private, not real.
One night, she meets another woman at a bar, and an escape hatch swings open in the floor of her life. She falls into a consuming affair—into queerness, polyamory, kink, power and loss, humiliation and freedom, and an enormous surge of desire that lets her leave herself behind.
Maggie Millner’s captivating, seductive debut is a love story in poems that explores obsession, gender, identity, and the art and act of literary transformation. In rhyming couplets and prose vignettes, Couplets chronicles the strictures, structures, and pitfalls of relationships—the mirroring, the pleasing, the small jealousies and disappointments—and how the people we love can show us who we truly are.
"An endlessly inventive, wise, exhilarating book.”
—Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness and What Belongs to You
128 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 2023
141 people are currently reading
14457 people want to read
About the author
Maggie Millner
2 books113 followersMaggie Millner is the author of Couplets, forthcoming from FSG (USA) and Faber & Faber (UK) in early 2023. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, POETRY, Kenyon Review, BOMB, The Nation, and elsewhere. She is a Lecturer at Yale and a Senior Editor at The Yale Review.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 890 reviews
March 2, 2025
In case you were wondering: Couplets
Is a novel in rhyming couplets
About couplets
Who break up and form new couplets
If you think my couplets have lazy rhymes
Try Maggie Millner whose own rhymes
Are the laziest I have ever seen
She can rhyme seen with nothing
Even closely resembling it
I’m not saying her rhyming’s shit
Or that everything has to rhyme perfectly
(I wasn’t born in 1720)
And I get how troubled rhyming
Mirrors the novel’s theme
Of troubled relationships
One doesn’t need a Guggenheim Fellowship
To understand what Millner is going for
You know: content vs form?
It’s just that I found a lot of her rhymes off putting
And somewhat unpoetic
When it comes to rhyming I may be anal
Of this I'm well aware but
The verse aspect of the novel seemed to me
A little gimmicky
(rhyming “seemed to me”
With “gimmicky” kinda
Works actually!) Also enjamb-
Ment let’s talk about enjamb-
Ment for a moment shall we? a cool trick
That can make verses click
But like anything cool one had better use it
Sparingly lest the reader lose it
Fling the book across the room
And spend the day in icy gloom
All this would have been unimportant however
Had there been behind this sloppy rhymer
A good yarn to maintain the reader’s interest
Or had the book been addressed
To an organ other than my brain
To my heart perhaps or to my gut or my skin
The off-rhyming would have been forgiven
The frolicsome enjambment
Would have been welcomed with open arms
Hélas Millner’s tale had for me no charms
A bit cold it was and overexplanatory
Kinky in parts but not much of a story
My heart my gut my sensitive skin
They barely felt a goddamn thing
—I’m sorry to put this so bluntly:
It's not you Maggie Millner it's me
February 11, 2023
Maggie Millner’s debut collection, “Couplets,” has a red hot cover, but the poems inside are even hotter. A love story in verse and prose, “Couplets” is already attracting a swell of critical and popular attention. Our reviewer, Kristen Millares Young, writes, "Restless, imaginative and daring, ‘Couplets’ advances the canon of the erotic."
The poems — constructed from endlessly clever rhyming couplets — describe a young woman’s uneasy shift from loving a man to loving a woman for the first time.
In a moment of introspection, she says, “I saw a person who kissed mostly men, / wrote poems in the prevailing style, owned a cat. / I saw a different person after that.”
I saw a different poetry after that: entirely accessible but challenging, formally inventive but coherent, thematically radical but never dogmatic. You can sense Millner fracturing rhymes and meters to create lines as iconoclastic as the sexual framework her speaker is struggling to discover. “Couplets” is witty, erotic and disarmingly candid about the mercurial nature of desire and identity.
The poems — constructed from endlessly clever rhyming couplets — describe a young woman’s uneasy shift from loving a man to loving a woman for the first time.
In a moment of introspection, she says, “I saw a person who kissed mostly men, / wrote poems in the prevailing style, owned a cat. / I saw a different person after that.”
I saw a different poetry after that: entirely accessible but challenging, formally inventive but coherent, thematically radical but never dogmatic. You can sense Millner fracturing rhymes and meters to create lines as iconoclastic as the sexual framework her speaker is struggling to discover. “Couplets” is witty, erotic and disarmingly candid about the mercurial nature of desire and identity.
August 24, 2023
The only thing worse than heartbreak is a bisexual Yale woman gentrifying BedStuy
February 6, 2023
told in rhyming couplets, this short novel follows a young woman as she embarks on her first queer relationship. reflecting on her previous boyfriend and the woman she’s now seeing, the book follows along on a series of vignettes exploring queerness, power, loss, freedom, desire, identity, art, love, and at its core - relationships. it begs the question whether we are shaped by every relationship we have, whether we are vessels which hold the ghosts of all our previous lovers inside of us.
couplets is a fast-paced, cerebral, and creative little book which plays with the form of both the novel and poetry. you can easily fly through it in one sitting.
thank you @faberbooks for the advanced copy! couplets is out in the uk on 2 march 2023.
couplets is a fast-paced, cerebral, and creative little book which plays with the form of both the novel and poetry. you can easily fly through it in one sitting.
thank you @faberbooks for the advanced copy! couplets is out in the uk on 2 march 2023.
April 18, 2023
“Couplets”…..
….a pair of end-rhythmed lines of verse that are self-contained in grammatical structure and meaning.
I enjoyed this book for what it was… a novel in verse.
It’s divided into four books. Yet I really couldn’t tell the difference in tone, style, or themes between
Book 1, 2, 3, or 4.
I’m sure I missed something more profound—
I mean I enjoyed it — the conversations — thoughts about lust, power, beliefs, modern life — dating, sexing, suffering,… from the context that perhaps poetry represented one woman’s life-force.
This is Maggie Millner’s debut.
It’s a love story of sorts.
Its interesting - a fast read - but I doubt it will leave a lasting impact on me months from now.
Yet… it’s powerfully-skillfully written: admirable and readable….
themes about monogamy, hall passes, queerness, sadness, grief, loneliness, sexuality, desires, fear, guilt, and love.
“And isn’t love itself a type of rhyme? And don’t gender and genre share one route? Maybe I really am a poet, needing as I do from these imperfect sets,
which constitute a self, the lie of sense”.
“I kept making the same ludicrous wish that the things I didn’t like might vanish
of their own accord. Envy. Pimples. Debt.
My stack of griefs. The internet, whose central purpose seemed to be to turn the best parts of humanity—our hungers for belongings, art, and sex— into surveillance logs and payouts for execs. It was both invisible and everywhere like the wealth gap or the ozone layer and foiled any threat of our collectivizing.
Of course, I had no plan to make it better.
And I knew my sneering hauteur was its own repellent, habit: an itchy frock I wore to parties, where I made small talk about book reviews and carbon capture while down below the surface of our banter, I’d feel a sheet of rime steadily start to form between me and my counterpart”.
“Love found me twice, at once. If it never happens again, I’ll still be luckier than the moon. Breathing, typing these lines, texting a friend, checking the time, thinking it wouldn’t always feel like this, but still, sometimes, it was. It is”.
About a 3.7 rating
I liked it. Appreciate it.
….a pair of end-rhythmed lines of verse that are self-contained in grammatical structure and meaning.
I enjoyed this book for what it was… a novel in verse.
It’s divided into four books. Yet I really couldn’t tell the difference in tone, style, or themes between
Book 1, 2, 3, or 4.
I’m sure I missed something more profound—
I mean I enjoyed it — the conversations — thoughts about lust, power, beliefs, modern life — dating, sexing, suffering,… from the context that perhaps poetry represented one woman’s life-force.
This is Maggie Millner’s debut.
It’s a love story of sorts.
Its interesting - a fast read - but I doubt it will leave a lasting impact on me months from now.
Yet… it’s powerfully-skillfully written: admirable and readable….
themes about monogamy, hall passes, queerness, sadness, grief, loneliness, sexuality, desires, fear, guilt, and love.
“And isn’t love itself a type of rhyme? And don’t gender and genre share one route? Maybe I really am a poet, needing as I do from these imperfect sets,
which constitute a self, the lie of sense”.
“I kept making the same ludicrous wish that the things I didn’t like might vanish
of their own accord. Envy. Pimples. Debt.
My stack of griefs. The internet, whose central purpose seemed to be to turn the best parts of humanity—our hungers for belongings, art, and sex— into surveillance logs and payouts for execs. It was both invisible and everywhere like the wealth gap or the ozone layer and foiled any threat of our collectivizing.
Of course, I had no plan to make it better.
And I knew my sneering hauteur was its own repellent, habit: an itchy frock I wore to parties, where I made small talk about book reviews and carbon capture while down below the surface of our banter, I’d feel a sheet of rime steadily start to form between me and my counterpart”.
“Love found me twice, at once. If it never happens again, I’ll still be luckier than the moon. Breathing, typing these lines, texting a friend, checking the time, thinking it wouldn’t always feel like this, but still, sometimes, it was. It is”.
About a 3.7 rating
I liked it. Appreciate it.
May 3, 2025
bravo les lesbiennes
November 10, 2023
I started reading this book mostly curious about the choice of a verse novel for the debut only to find it impressively rich in the author’s quest for literary narratives, each with immense possibilities as well as limitations (poetry, rhyming couplets, free-form prose, autofiction, first- and second-person narrative) for expressing one’s journey through love and life. And parallel to the metamorphosing forms of literary narratives the narrator is also undergoing transformations in her self-discovery and sexuality as a woman.
At the “plot” level, it’s a novel about the narrator’s relationship with her boyfriend, their breakup, and her falling in love with a woman, erotically charged but ultimately it’s about finding the structured steadiness in life, as elusive as the perfectly rhyming couplets, which in the end
She also engages in conversations, figuratively speaking, with other women writers (George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Willa Cather, Nathalie Legér...), essayists (Vivian Gornick) and poets (Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Louise Glück…), with embedded quotations either contextualized within the story or perceptively commented on. The epigraph is taken from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem “Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink” (turns out revealingly).
The writing is deftly poetic, the explorations of literary narratives are seamlessly woven into the novel’s story, and the story itself is subtly layered with thoughts on the freedom to make choices in our lives (and more) and engagingly paced. Kudos to Millner for this impressive debut.
(4.5/5)
At the “plot” level, it’s a novel about the narrator’s relationship with her boyfriend, their breakup, and her falling in love with a woman, erotically charged but ultimately it’s about finding the structured steadiness in life, as elusive as the perfectly rhyming couplets, which in the end
She also engages in conversations, figuratively speaking, with other women writers (George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Willa Cather, Nathalie Legér...), essayists (Vivian Gornick) and poets (Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Louise Glück…), with embedded quotations either contextualized within the story or perceptively commented on. The epigraph is taken from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem “Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink” (turns out revealingly).
The writing is deftly poetic, the explorations of literary narratives are seamlessly woven into the novel’s story, and the story itself is subtly layered with thoughts on the freedom to make choices in our lives (and more) and engagingly paced. Kudos to Millner for this impressive debut.
(4.5/5)
January 7, 2023
Couplets by Maggie Millner is a novel written in “rhyming couplets and prose vignettes.” I am unfamiliar with both and therefore didn't know what to expect, but I was initially hooked by the cover and the description of “a dazzling love story in poems about one woman’s coming-out, coming-of-age, and coming undone."
Unfortunately, this didn’t work for me at all. I’m not sure whether it was the structure; I heavily preferred the vignettes to the poetry, and I liked the use of second person in the vignettes, but I found the story somewhat overdone and overwritten. I know every story doesn’t have to be universal and it’s better to lead with empathy, but so much of the ‘plot’ felt detached from any feeling at all. It’s a very short book but there were lots of lines that took me out of the reading experience completely. I know it comes down to personal taste, but lines like, “I’d expected cream, or cream when I’d expected semen,” and “This was why I liked to keep two of her fingers in my body while we slept. I longed to be her property. I wanted her to smell me in her nail-beds all day long.” felt so oddly sensationalized and unaffected, and altogether I felt that the narrative lacked emotion and struggled to maintain investment.
1.6 was my favourite section by far, but other than one hilarious line in 2.4, the rest was fairly boring and hard to read. I don’t know if my expectations were too high or I was too unfamiliar/personally uninterested with polyamory, or if the structure just lost me, but I didn’t feel like this book had any impact. I know that I'm in the minority here, but the writing felt like someone thinking they were doing a lot more than they actually are—It didn’t come across as sincere, and everything felt wrapped-up and faux-serious, and hidden like it was all an inside joke. Even though it’s a linear story with a very internal focus, I still felt like nothing had changed at the end, even if that’s factually untrue. It wasn’t a story that felt lost, exactly, but more that everything together held no importance to me. The structure meant that everyone was unnamed with all personal details stripped apart. It felt like an outline of a life with a bunch of ideas projected onto relationships after they were over. I think there is something there, and I know that Millner’s work is beloved and most reviews are glowing, but whatever it is it simply did not resonate with me.
Overall, I really hate writing negative reviews and I’m glad to see that most people seem to be enjoying this one! But I don’t think Couplets is a book that will stick with me or one that I’ll come back to.
Unfortunately, this didn’t work for me at all. I’m not sure whether it was the structure; I heavily preferred the vignettes to the poetry, and I liked the use of second person in the vignettes, but I found the story somewhat overdone and overwritten. I know every story doesn’t have to be universal and it’s better to lead with empathy, but so much of the ‘plot’ felt detached from any feeling at all. It’s a very short book but there were lots of lines that took me out of the reading experience completely. I know it comes down to personal taste, but lines like, “I’d expected cream, or cream when I’d expected semen,” and “This was why I liked to keep two of her fingers in my body while we slept. I longed to be her property. I wanted her to smell me in her nail-beds all day long.” felt so oddly sensationalized and unaffected, and altogether I felt that the narrative lacked emotion and struggled to maintain investment.
1.6 was my favourite section by far, but other than one hilarious line in 2.4, the rest was fairly boring and hard to read. I don’t know if my expectations were too high or I was too unfamiliar/personally uninterested with polyamory, or if the structure just lost me, but I didn’t feel like this book had any impact. I know that I'm in the minority here, but the writing felt like someone thinking they were doing a lot more than they actually are—It didn’t come across as sincere, and everything felt wrapped-up and faux-serious, and hidden like it was all an inside joke. Even though it’s a linear story with a very internal focus, I still felt like nothing had changed at the end, even if that’s factually untrue. It wasn’t a story that felt lost, exactly, but more that everything together held no importance to me. The structure meant that everyone was unnamed with all personal details stripped apart. It felt like an outline of a life with a bunch of ideas projected onto relationships after they were over. I think there is something there, and I know that Millner’s work is beloved and most reviews are glowing, but whatever it is it simply did not resonate with me.
Overall, I really hate writing negative reviews and I’m glad to see that most people seem to be enjoying this one! But I don’t think Couplets is a book that will stick with me or one that I’ll come back to.
January 6, 2023
This was a 3.5-star read for me, or thereabouts. I'm always here for queer literature, so that's initially what drew me to this as I was unfamiliar with Maggie Millner's previous work. She's certainly got a gift for storytelling and a clever way with words that helped propel me through this within about an hour or so. I wanted to keep reading to see what was going to happen, to get to the inevitable crash that was set up from the very first page.
There's an intensity that is intrinsic in LGBTQIA+ lit, particularly involving two cis women, likely because emotions run very high in these relationships (yes, higher than in straight relationships, in my experience). Millner really conveyed the push/pull of these connections well, and I loved that.
However, I did deduct two stars as the technicality of some of the writing — references to other writers/works, citations, etc. — really pulled me out of the emotional aspect. I appreciate that's an important part of the narrator's experience and personality, so I can't say it should have been removed, it just didn't work for me as well.
There's an intensity that is intrinsic in LGBTQIA+ lit, particularly involving two cis women, likely because emotions run very high in these relationships (yes, higher than in straight relationships, in my experience). Millner really conveyed the push/pull of these connections well, and I loved that.
However, I did deduct two stars as the technicality of some of the writing — references to other writers/works, citations, etc. — really pulled me out of the emotional aspect. I appreciate that's an important part of the narrator's experience and personality, so I can't say it should have been removed, it just didn't work for me as well.
July 11, 2023
Look, I’ve never been a poetry girly, never been my bag. I wanted to try this out and it just didn’t work out. *deep sigh* I felt disconnected for the majority of the book.
The story itself is interesting and would’ve been sooo much better, maybe even a mild banger, had it not been written using poems.
The story itself is interesting and would’ve been sooo much better, maybe even a mild banger, had it not been written using poems.
May 29, 2023
If you can make a vape sound as beautiful as maggie millner can I want to be your bff.
August 1, 2023
“you could’ve had everything that you wanted, had it been what you wanted.”
i listened to this on audio and maggie millner reads the poetry herself. couplets is a love story told in verse. the speaker is living a somewhat regular life with her long time boyfriend, when she meets a woman at a bar and decides to enter into her first queer relationship. couplets (brilliant to use the form couplets for this subject) ponders the ways in which desire drives our decisions, how relationships mold us or change us or maybe do nothing at all but remain a singularity, and interweaves literary analysis on love. i really breezed through this audiobook. i smiled and laughed and stared off into the distance.
i listened to this on audio and maggie millner reads the poetry herself. couplets is a love story told in verse. the speaker is living a somewhat regular life with her long time boyfriend, when she meets a woman at a bar and decides to enter into her first queer relationship. couplets (brilliant to use the form couplets for this subject) ponders the ways in which desire drives our decisions, how relationships mold us or change us or maybe do nothing at all but remain a singularity, and interweaves literary analysis on love. i really breezed through this audiobook. i smiled and laughed and stared off into the distance.
February 13, 2023
I really enjoyed reading this.
This explores the experience of realising you’re queer late in your twenties, sabotaging a relationship, and the sapphic relationship that follows messing with your head.
I particularly enjoyed the presentation of queer obsession, particularly that “first” queer relationship and what it means, and realising who you are in between it all. The continuous, stream-of-consciousness vibe really worked to represent the panic and questioning that comes with this kind of experience.
The reason for the slightly lower rating is I personally didn’t love the couplets for this, I think free verse would’ve suited it better - couplets felt too restrictive for the mess that is this experience. Maybe that’s what the author was trying to show? Unsure, but I didn’t love it. This structure also really quickened the pace, and made it like a fever dream. This really worked for me with the content, but forced me to rush through, when I really wanted to take my time and savour what was being said.
Overall a really engaging and enjoyable read of queer poetry. Definitely recommend.
This explores the experience of realising you’re queer late in your twenties, sabotaging a relationship, and the sapphic relationship that follows messing with your head.
I particularly enjoyed the presentation of queer obsession, particularly that “first” queer relationship and what it means, and realising who you are in between it all. The continuous, stream-of-consciousness vibe really worked to represent the panic and questioning that comes with this kind of experience.
The reason for the slightly lower rating is I personally didn’t love the couplets for this, I think free verse would’ve suited it better - couplets felt too restrictive for the mess that is this experience. Maybe that’s what the author was trying to show? Unsure, but I didn’t love it. This structure also really quickened the pace, and made it like a fever dream. This really worked for me with the content, but forced me to rush through, when I really wanted to take my time and savour what was being said.
Overall a really engaging and enjoyable read of queer poetry. Definitely recommend.
May 13, 2023
fans of bluets: run, don't walk! narrative book of poetry about relationships, sexuality, trying to find out what you even want. even though it covers some melancholy things, this book gave me such joy. I think I was actually smiling at parts, there is such a lightness and playfulness to the writing. it's amazing what she does with couplets and it's really just fun to read rhyming poetry. it can feel overly self-aware at times, as you feel her trying to get ahead of the narrative while she introduces you to it. but then she uses that to talk about how your experience changes when you externalize it, so even that aspect worked. a very grateful book.
April 5, 2025
Poema llarg i narratiu, que explica la història d'amor i desig amb una dona. Però, més que això, és una indagació en les relacions heteros i queers, és un diàleg amb diverses autores sobre l'amor, el desig, el desamor, els amors simultanis...i també una reflexió sobre l'escriptura, la poesia sobretot, i el lloc que té o pot tenir l'amor en ella.
December 14, 2024
There lies talent behind the prose. I thought the writing to be exquisite.
March 3, 2023
"It was hard to know which aspects to feel guilty for, so I was like my catholic mother, always rounding up. Maybe that's why I felt most free when I was choked and tied with cables to the bed; when bound and gagged; when told that I was very, very bad."
I felt as if I was having an affair while reading this. It was a thrilling and beautiful read full of poetry that would bring anyone to their knees. Absolutely stunning.
I felt as if I was having an affair while reading this. It was a thrilling and beautiful read full of poetry that would bring anyone to their knees. Absolutely stunning.
November 10, 2025
(1.5)
the whole style of rhyming couplets just didn't work for me and, honestly, if that's what you're going to do, at least commit to making them rhyme! in what universe would "potatoes au gratin"ever rhyme with "little women"? and don't even get me started on the points where she just seemed to give up on finding a rhyme
anyway, if it had all been written in those more prose-like second person chapters, i would have enjoyed this so much more
the whole style of rhyming couplets just didn't work for me and, honestly, if that's what you're going to do, at least commit to making them rhyme! in what universe would "potatoes au gratin"ever rhyme with "little women"? and don't even get me started on the points where she just seemed to give up on finding a rhyme
anyway, if it had all been written in those more prose-like second person chapters, i would have enjoyed this so much more
April 11, 2025
Look, I'm not sure what to do with this. I think I enjoyed it, but I am not convinced it was good. Instead of a formal review, please consider the snarky opinions I scribbled in my Notes app:
>If Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dreamhouse had a baby with Maggie Nelson's Bluets, it would be this. But, like most middle class children, it would never live up to its parents' aspirations.
>Is this poetry or a longwinded Livejournal?
>I'd love to be her friend but I would hate to sit next to her in workshop.
>Why do so many liberals convince themselves they should "try polyamory" out of some ethical obligation? They only recreate the same normative rules of monogamy, stop making us unhinged nonmonogamists look bad.
>This is the kind of work that makes me want to be a writer. Not because it is good, but because its mediocrity is wonderfully lauded.
>We're obsessed with second person because we our narcissistic egos crave being addressed directly.
>This is a perfect encapsulation of our culture at this time (derogatory).
>Bahahahah can you really have a subpar, pretentiously sapphic "love story in poems" if you don't juxtapose Judith Butler with a consumer purchase?
>This book could have been an email.
>Maggie, I would 100% buy you a beer, I'm sorry I'm such a bitch I really relished in critically listening to you read a very vulnerable piece of work.
>2.5 stars? For extreme relatability?
>If Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dreamhouse had a baby with Maggie Nelson's Bluets, it would be this. But, like most middle class children, it would never live up to its parents' aspirations.
>Is this poetry or a longwinded Livejournal?
>I'd love to be her friend but I would hate to sit next to her in workshop.
>Why do so many liberals convince themselves they should "try polyamory" out of some ethical obligation? They only recreate the same normative rules of monogamy, stop making us unhinged nonmonogamists look bad.
>This is the kind of work that makes me want to be a writer. Not because it is good, but because its mediocrity is wonderfully lauded.
>We're obsessed with second person because we our narcissistic egos crave being addressed directly.
>This is a perfect encapsulation of our culture at this time (derogatory).
>Bahahahah can you really have a subpar, pretentiously sapphic "love story in poems" if you don't juxtapose Judith Butler with a consumer purchase?
>This book could have been an email.
>Maggie, I would 100% buy you a beer, I'm sorry I'm such a bitch I really relished in critically listening to you read a very vulnerable piece of work.
>2.5 stars? For extreme relatability?
January 29, 2023
I can recognize that this was at the very least well written but I found it a little convoluted at times. There were entire chapters (passages?) that left me wondering what the fuck I just read. My eyes would glaze over and I was taking in words without comprehension because it seemed as though they were picked at random. But the parts that I understood, I really enjoyed. So 3 stars, it's just *fine*.
July 11, 2023
finished in a day and cried nearly the whole time. god bless
February 12, 2024
polyamory is devouring brooklyn
December 16, 2023
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A quirky 4 star read.
Written in rhyming couplets, its a very addictive book. It flows so easily, before you know it, you've finished it In one day.
A quirky 4 star read.
Written in rhyming couplets, its a very addictive book. It flows so easily, before you know it, you've finished it In one day.
March 25, 2023
1.5 stars
i thought the premise of this was interesting but in reality i found the story to be really lackluster and the form didn't add anything to the story. kinda gimmicky tbh...
i thought the premise of this was interesting but in reality i found the story to be really lackluster and the form didn't add anything to the story. kinda gimmicky tbh...
September 17, 2023
i really didn't connect with these poems. at all.
July 9, 2025
Bonjour et bienvenue dans la review du pire livre que j’ai jamais lu de toute ma vie
Souvenez vous du fameux adage « il faut dire JE N’AIME PAS plutôt que c’est NUL » et bien ici ça ne s’applique pas puisque ce livre est en toute objectivité nul à chier
Tout d’abord quelle est cette folie de diffuser la rumeur comme quoi les lesbiennes se lisent des poèmes érotiques en plein ébat ?? D’où ça sort merci de laisser Sapho tranquille par pitié c’était il y a des années passons à autre chose
Je vais d’ailleurs continuer cette
review en écrivant en vers de manière complètement
Arbitraire
Comme l’autrice
Qui écrit comme ça sans
Aucune raison
Comme si personne n’avait jamais
Instauré des règles
Pour écrire de la poésie
D’ailleurs est-ce qu’on peut toujours
Parler de livre lesbien
Quand l’autrice passe la moitié du temps à parler de
Son mec/ex comme quoi il lui manque
Et l’autre moitié à dire que la meuf dont elle
Est follement tombée amoureuse
Est trop méchante et trop
antipathique
clichés sur clichés et phrases banales à tout
zazimut
Les sujets de dissert donnés aux collégiens sont apparement
Des révélations pour elle ( elle dit que l’art c’est quand l’expérience individuelle devient
Une expérience universelle comme si elle
Venait d’inventer l’eau chaude ou
Le papier cul)
Je m’en bas les couilles de tout ce qu’elle dit je m’en contre fou de son histoire d’amour car elle est racontée comme la chanson I kissed a girl
Souvenez vous du fameux adage « il faut dire JE N’AIME PAS plutôt que c’est NUL » et bien ici ça ne s’applique pas puisque ce livre est en toute objectivité nul à chier
Tout d’abord quelle est cette folie de diffuser la rumeur comme quoi les lesbiennes se lisent des poèmes érotiques en plein ébat ?? D’où ça sort merci de laisser Sapho tranquille par pitié c’était il y a des années passons à autre chose
Je vais d’ailleurs continuer cette
review en écrivant en vers de manière complètement
Arbitraire
Comme l’autrice
Qui écrit comme ça sans
Aucune raison
Comme si personne n’avait jamais
Instauré des règles
Pour écrire de la poésie
D’ailleurs est-ce qu’on peut toujours
Parler de livre lesbien
Quand l’autrice passe la moitié du temps à parler de
Son mec/ex comme quoi il lui manque
Et l’autre moitié à dire que la meuf dont elle
Est follement tombée amoureuse
Est trop méchante et trop
antipathique
clichés sur clichés et phrases banales à tout
zazimut
Les sujets de dissert donnés aux collégiens sont apparement
Des révélations pour elle ( elle dit que l’art c’est quand l’expérience individuelle devient
Une expérience universelle comme si elle
Venait d’inventer l’eau chaude ou
Le papier cul)
Je m’en bas les couilles de tout ce qu’elle dit je m’en contre fou de son histoire d’amour car elle est racontée comme la chanson I kissed a girl
July 15, 2023
A love story which uses its form to explore the themes of romance and monogamy. Couplets is about a woman who leaves her current relationship to embark on a romance with another woman who she is completely infatuated with. The entire story is told in rhyming couplets and so it was a real treat to listen to this on audiobook and read by the author. Poetry expreses the anxiety and delirium of love really well and it fit well with the narrators worries about cheating and heartbreak.
Giving it 3 stars as I don’t think this is a book which will stick with me but whilst I listened to it I did really enjoy it and found the poetry really pleasant to experience. I think this is a good segue into poetry if you struggle with it as there is more of a plot to this book. It’s good to see some more experimental literature with LGBTQ themes at its core being published.
Giving it 3 stars as I don’t think this is a book which will stick with me but whilst I listened to it I did really enjoy it and found the poetry really pleasant to experience. I think this is a good segue into poetry if you struggle with it as there is more of a plot to this book. It’s good to see some more experimental literature with LGBTQ themes at its core being published.
April 28, 2024
4.5 ⭐️ rounded up. Yanked me right out of a reading slump in a single afternoon.
June 13, 2023
I absolutely loved reading this collection of poems. It is a novel in verse really, even an autobiographical novel if you please, which perhaps makes it so much more intimate, and special. It is about the love after coming out as queer. For a woman who has only known how to love men, suddenly falls in love with women, and that's when the storytelling tone changes - the personal also becomes political, and the question of falling in and out of love is not just experiential.
Millner's verse is neat, simple - with all the heartache, the longing, the confusion of falling in love with another woman, and then to explore all levels of love - the obsessive, to fear, to envy, and how to become yourself at the end.
Couplets is about a first queer relationship. The lens is inward, but so much out there for all to see. It is written in couplets, with sections of prose poetry. How do you become queer, and how is the process of seeing yourself as one? How is it to be queer for another? Are you then queer for yourself at all? Millner explores so much and says so little, and says it all at the same time. The brevity of the poems, the subtle nature of the words on paper that refuse to be bracketed and while there is no subjectivity at all, there is a memoir in all of this somewhere. So you get everything - a memoir, a collection of poems, a novel, and to write in the first person.
Couplets is also about memory, of forgetfulness, of loves requited and unrequited, of shared experiences, of how we bond over and over again, while it is a book about two, it is a book about many, about all of us.
Millner's verse is neat, simple - with all the heartache, the longing, the confusion of falling in love with another woman, and then to explore all levels of love - the obsessive, to fear, to envy, and how to become yourself at the end.
Couplets is about a first queer relationship. The lens is inward, but so much out there for all to see. It is written in couplets, with sections of prose poetry. How do you become queer, and how is the process of seeing yourself as one? How is it to be queer for another? Are you then queer for yourself at all? Millner explores so much and says so little, and says it all at the same time. The brevity of the poems, the subtle nature of the words on paper that refuse to be bracketed and while there is no subjectivity at all, there is a memoir in all of this somewhere. So you get everything - a memoir, a collection of poems, a novel, and to write in the first person.
Couplets is also about memory, of forgetfulness, of loves requited and unrequited, of shared experiences, of how we bond over and over again, while it is a book about two, it is a book about many, about all of us.
April 9, 2023
Compelling and deft, Couplets is a novel-in-verse, describing its narrator's break-up with a man she has been living with for many years, in order to be with a woman. Milner looks at the cataclysmic feeling at the end of a relationship, and explores the awakening of lust and intimacy in lush, sensual detail. She's interested in the labels we use to define ourselves -- queer, polyamorous, kinky, vanilla -- and what these mean on an emotional level. Told in a mixture of rhyming couplets and prose poems, the novel flows beautiful and is compulsively readable. I especially admired the sections on sex and intimacy: Milner captures the physicality of the body, and the overwhelming sensations of lust and need in a compelling and rich way. My main complaint is that I wish this book were longer: there are many places where the characters or scenes could be expanded, and I think this book's brevity works against it. It is very rich with detail, but lacks depth. But perhaps leaving her reader wanting more is exactly what Milner intended! This is imperfect, but well worth reading.
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