Review: Depression & Other Magic Tricks by Sabrina Benaim
Originally written in September 2019.
Though mental illnesses have always been present, there are common misconceptions about what they are and what they look like for different people. For example, one may believe someone with depression never has a good time, never laughs, and is never happy. While this is false, it can be easy to accept without knowing about the illness. A variety of artists showing their own experiences with mental illness is an effective way for a widespread audience to see some of the ways people are affected.
Artists, such as Sabrina Benaim, began discussing their own journey through their work to attempt to dismantle these incorrect assumptions, as well as give information on what these journeys with mental illness actually look like. Benaim is a 31-year-old, Canadian poet who emphasized her voice in the world when her literal voice was threatened by a tumor in her throat. This medical complication highlighted the importance of what she wanted to say to the world. Following this issue, Benaim has used writing and spoken word poetry as a way to maneuver it, as well as her anxiety and depression.
Benaim’s 2017 poetry collection “Depression & Other Magic Tricks” is a 75-page book that explores Benaim’s journey with modern life in regard to mental health. It shows the current human experience with mental illness in a creative and relatable way. At a point in time with so many people around the world experiencing issues with mental health, it is necessary to learn to live with these newly common challenges.
Though Benaim and I come from different backgrounds, different countries, and different experiences in the world, I relate to her work through her writing to manage anxiety and depression. I also feel a relation to the way her poems are often constructed; many of her poems feel like you are not meant to breathe while reading them. This is a connection to anxiety, in those situations where one has felt like they have been talking for an extended period of time without taking a breath. The form of the pieces serves as an important insight to the message conveyed by the collection as a whole. None of the poems in the collection have a specific rhyme scheme, creating a sense of constant change, which can also be found in mental illness. Her use of irony, specific form, and her tone create a larger message about mental illness within this collection.
Irony is found throughout Benaim’s work, beginning with the title. One would not expect depression to be labeled as a “magic trick,” like she did. In addition, the lack of capital letters in the collection often assumes a soft, passive tone, however that is not the tone in which the author typically reads her own work in spoken word form. This irony is a metaphor of some of the assumptions around mental illnesses; it shows what anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses are assumed to be from an outsider perspective, compared to what they actually are. Benaim even alludes to this metaphor with a quote from her grandmother Jean that is placed between the table of contents and the second poem in the collection: “what you see is what you get, but that’s not all there is.”
The first piece in the book is tiled first date; it is a page and a half, with sparse capital letters, random spacings, and seemingly no strict form to follow, which is ironic in the fully justified text on the page. The piece is essentially a long-winded elevator pitch about herself, which is why it has been given a significant location in the book: before the table of contents. The placement of this poem shows its importance and serves as Benaim’s introduction.
In addition to writing, Benaim uses spoken word poetry to convey her messages. In a video of her reading first date, she creates an energetic, yet anxious environment. The reading of this poem is often fast-paced and mirrors what people with anxiety often feel like when introducing themselves or talking to someone they just met.
Benaim included multiple erasure poems in this collection. An erasure poem is created from something that already exists, such as a song, a page from a book, a book in its entirety, and other pieces of work. The erasure poems in this collection are left as they were originally written, in terms of capitalization and punctuation. They are the only parts of the book where the word “I” is capitalized, even in the book’s preface and acknowledgements.
Her poem better together is an erasure poem, created from Jack Johnson’s song with the same title. Benaim has highlighted a majority of the words from the song in black, only leaving: “I believe in memories / But there is not enough time.” The words of this poem are typed in bold to make them stand with the words that were marked out with black highlighter.
The final poem in the collection, follow-up a prayer / a spell, is an almost entirely 2-line stanza poem, with only the final stanza containing 4 lines. The poem has an ambitious tone and a feeling of starting something new, which is one example of the irony she uses. The final line of the poem is: “i exhale / & i begin”. This poem allows the reader to very literally see endings can be beginnings; just like Benaim has done here, with the final word in the collection being “begin.”
The cover of this book, designed by Nikki Clark, has an off-white background, with an outline in black of a head and part of a face. The face has pink lipstick and blue hair pulled up in a ponytail. The face, however, does not show anything above the tip of the figure’s nose. This creates a feeling of a lack of sight of the writer’s future. When she could not metaphorically see what would happen in the future, she turned to her voice and writing for guidance for her tumor, anxiety, and depression. The title of the collection is written in cursive under the outline.
