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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
I am not a great lover of poetry and am usually stumped by it. Historically if poetry isn't a haiku or in iambic pentameter I am a little too dumb to read it, because I don't know how to make it sound in my inner voice. Don't ask me to read it out loud. I am self-conscious of this blind spot. I tried reading The Waste Lands last year and was totally bumfuzzled by it.
Anyway, I saw this in a little free library yesterday. Chewed through it rapidly. It is not surprising that I did not relate to all of these, but some of them really dropped into a hollow place within and bounced around, echoing all the while.
I am usually pretty open to vulnerability in my writing but these are pretty raw and I am a little too self-conscious to type the ones that meant the most to me here. But I will obscure them in a bit list of the page numbers for those that spoke to me so loudly:
19, 22, 25, 26, 30-33, 35, 36, 47, 52, 53.
63, 67, 79, 87, 97, 103, 105, 109, 122.
160, 185.
205, 207, 229, 240.
I also really liked the closing poem (?) on an unnumbered grey page towards the back that starts, "and then there are days..."
Anyway, I saw this in a little free library yesterday. Chewed through it rapidly. It is not surprising that I did not relate to all of these, but some of them really dropped into a hollow place within and bounced around, echoing all the while.
I am usually pretty open to vulnerability in my writing but these are pretty raw and I am a little too self-conscious to type the ones that meant the most to me here. But I will obscure them in a bit list of the page numbers for those that spoke to me so loudly:
19, 22, 25, 26, 30-33, 35, 36, 47, 52, 53.
63, 67, 79, 87, 97, 103, 105, 109, 122.
160, 185.
205, 207, 229, 240.
I also really liked the closing poem (?) on an unnumbered grey page towards the back that starts, "and then there are days..."
reflective
medium-paced
some of the poems really stuck with me. some i thought were gorgeous. i think the shorter poems are easily memeable and easy to judge. i felt that many of the poems were not very profound, BUT there were a few that painted an image i couldn't get out of my head. i look forward to revisiting those select poems at some point!
overall, though this just wasn't my cup of tea. i felt like i was skimming through poems i didn't quite love to get to the good stuff. one user referred to this book as full of cliches and i have to agree. throughout this book i kept thinking to myself... but we all know this, right? i wish i had read this in 2017 or 2018 closer to when it came out. maybe what's cliche to me only became cliche in a post-2020 world.
kaur's section on immigrants and what it means to be a wife and a mother is TRULY beautiful. that said, i couldn't help but feel it struck a completely different chord than the previous sections. i'm paraphrasing here, but i felt as though the book went from: "i am depressed. i don't know how i was able to stay in this shitty relationship for so long" to "we need open borders and people shouldn't be bigots." WHICH IS A SENTIMENT I ADORE! AND TOO WANT TO SCREAM FROM THE ROOFTOPS! but i didn't feel like it matched the tone of the rest of the book, and dare i say came off a little pretentious (this might just also be me projecting. who knows).
i don't think these five sections truly resonated with each other as well as they could have. further, i felt like the following section: rising, was a flood of limerence that just was not set up well by the beginning of the anthology. i guess poetry need not be held to the same standards of fiction, but when you read in order, the overall story does not feel cohesive. to me.
if you loved this book i'm so glad you did. it wasn't really for me.
overall, though this just wasn't my cup of tea. i felt like i was skimming through poems i didn't quite love to get to the good stuff. one user referred to this book as full of cliches and i have to agree. throughout this book i kept thinking to myself... but we all know this, right? i wish i had read this in 2017 or 2018 closer to when it came out. maybe what's cliche to me only became cliche in a post-2020 world.
kaur's section on immigrants and what it means to be a wife and a mother is TRULY beautiful. that said, i couldn't help but feel it struck a completely different chord than the previous sections. i'm paraphrasing here, but i felt as though the book went from: "i am depressed. i don't know how i was able to stay in this shitty relationship for so long" to "we need open borders and people shouldn't be bigots." WHICH IS A SENTIMENT I ADORE! AND TOO WANT TO SCREAM FROM THE ROOFTOPS! but i didn't feel like it matched the tone of the rest of the book,
i don't think these five sections truly resonated with each other as well as they could have. further, i felt like the following section: rising, was a flood of limerence that just was not set up well by the beginning of the anthology. i guess poetry need not be held to the same standards of fiction, but when you read in order, the overall story does not feel cohesive. to me.
if you loved this book i'm so glad you did. it wasn't really for me.
⭐️ 3.5/5
This rating feels low because I adored the first half of the poems in this book, but I didn’t like the second so much. It felt like too much of a vibe shift and didn’t flow very much to me. It was all good poetry but I felt like it was forced into one book when it would’ve been better as separate ones. That being said, I think different sections resonate with different people. I loved the beginning section called ‘wilting’
This rating feels low because I adored the first half of the poems in this book, but I didn’t like the second so much. It felt like too much of a vibe shift and didn’t flow very much to me. It was all good poetry but I felt like it was forced into one book when it would’ve been better as separate ones. That being said, I think different sections resonate with different people. I loved the beginning section called ‘wilting’
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
Went through a break up too recently — difficult to stomach, emotionally.