Sharper and Sharper — A Review of The Devil’s Wife by Will Winters

A review of Nymeria Publishing’s newest dark poetic offering.

Cat Webling
2 min readOct 6, 2022

“Hello, my wicked darling,
How does evil fare tonight?
Much better than your heart?
Which is more empty than mine?”

- From The Devil’s Proposal, by Will Winters

Yet again, I have had the absolute pleasure of joining Nymeria Publishing’s ARC program — this time, to review a sharp poetry collection entitled The Devil’s Wife.

The cover of The Devil’s Wife; a woman with short brown hair looks over her shoulder.
Via Nymeria Publishing.

This collection comes from poet Will Winters. Winters is new to the publishing scene, having previously only worked with high school publications. He has been writing for many years, documenting his struggles with identity and community as a transgender man.

Frankly, this collection is beautifully dark. Winters excels at creating short, personal, and powerful pieces that offer visceral imagery to depict the “monsters,” as he calls them, that occupy his mind and the world around him.

His poems contrast love and self-loathing, showing the pain and wonders of falling in and out of love, for the right reasons and the wrong reasons. They speak of the people we want to be and to see, and the people we really are, and how those images may not be the same, but they’re equally important.

I appreciate this collection for its complexity, and for the deeply personal perspective that it offers. Well done, Will, and well done Nymeria team.

The Devil’s Wife is available now from Nymeria Publishing.

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Cat Webling

Hello! I’m Cat, a writer and editor based out of Kansas. I write about literature, theater, gaming, and freelancing. Personal work: catwebling.com.