Take Up Your Skin and Others by Jennifer Crow
Self-Published (November 2025)
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Jennifer Crow is grateful for friends whose words, artwork, and photography inspire both poetry and hope. Her work has appeared in a number of print and electronic venues over the years, most recently in Not One of Us, The Wondrous Real, and Abyss & Apex. Her newest chapbook, Take Up Your Skin is available directly from her or free to subscribers of her Patreon page.
Jennifer Crow is known as a myth-punk poet, a genre in which classical folklore and faerie tales get hyper-poetic post-modern makeovers, and this new collection is no exception. There are poems voiced by selkies and victims of the fae, but also poems dedicated to Mary Shelly. Furthermore, there is a great essay about the necessity of public libraries titled “Not All Homes Are Houses” that grounds the collection in contemporary reality and contemporary horrors.
Crow’s style is distinct and lush. For example, the opening lines of “Casting Pearls” establish a dark mood for the reader:
Her body makes pearls out of cruelties:
each sharp word, every blow
absorbed, recast, until layers of nacre
cradle harsh realities,
until pain becomes beautiful
iridescence shimmering
in moonlight.
This language is typical for Crow, and readers who like their poems thick with imagery and Confessionalist approaches will enjoy this collection thoroughly.
Jennifer Crow is an award-winning poet whose dark fantasy and myth-based poems are famous for their language as much as their retellings of ancient fairy tales. Her newest chapbook, Take Up Your Skin, is a private delight for anyone willing to support her on her poetic journey, and would be at home on the shelves of any reader interested in horror poetry.
