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shaun_trinh 's review for:
Light Filters In: Poems
by Caroline Kaufman
Overall I did like this series of poems. There were a lot that I could resonate with, especially at the core of the authors struggles that promoted her journey. However I did also have issues connecting or understanding chunks of poems within each "chapter."
I thought the theme of all 4 sections were very clear, but the story being told within each section wasn't always as understandable. I found myself occasionally getting lost on what I was supposed to take away at random intervals in the book. The poems in the order that they are will have "weak points" where the cohesion of the section is lost because:
A.) We're radically changing topics from one poem to the next. Making it hard to understand where the author is within this part of their journey
B.) Specific types of people will be brought up multiple times like romantic partners, and it can be unclear on who they are as not all of them are resolved as ending.
C. There are poems that feel like fluff, that don't add to the overall message of the book or the section that they're in. They might have some sort of significance in it's own right, but as apart of this book, most sections had a few poems where I felt were unnecessary and muddied up the themes and discussions that the author wanted to have.
Another problem I had while reading was that I honestly couldn't tell where some of the poems ended. Sometimes I found myself reading onto the next page thinking the poem was continuing since the formatting was very similar between pages and there are no titles, only to realize "oh wait this doesn't make sense" and have to go back and re-read the previous poem to figure out if it ended on Page A or Page B.
I thought the planet headers were an interesting idea, though I don't know what the intent was with that choice. Was it to lead up to the poem on pages 202-203? The poem about Pluto and Charon.
I like a lot of these poems in isolation, but as a whole it was taken down a little because of the organization and formatting.
Something I did love about this book were the illustrations, I thought most of them while not always being giant, helped make the poems feel complete and more clear. They were also just really well drawn.
I also appreciated the lost and found opening poems to each sections.
The strongest point about this series is definitely the more raw, stripped down poems that focused on talking more directly to the reader about the authors experiences and feelings. Big metaphors and comparisons are great and the author uses them well, but there are also times where you can get a message across with less being more.
I picked this book up because I'm taking a creative writing class and we're doing poetry right now and wanted some inspiration to draw from and the author didn't disappoint and made me have a better appreciation for the craft.
I thought the theme of all 4 sections were very clear, but the story being told within each section wasn't always as understandable. I found myself occasionally getting lost on what I was supposed to take away at random intervals in the book. The poems in the order that they are will have "weak points" where the cohesion of the section is lost because:
A.) We're radically changing topics from one poem to the next. Making it hard to understand where the author is within this part of their journey
B.) Specific types of people will be brought up multiple times like romantic partners, and it can be unclear on who they are as not all of them are resolved as ending.
C. There are poems that feel like fluff, that don't add to the overall message of the book or the section that they're in. They might have some sort of significance in it's own right, but as apart of this book, most sections had a few poems where I felt were unnecessary and muddied up the themes and discussions that the author wanted to have.
Another problem I had while reading was that I honestly couldn't tell where some of the poems ended. Sometimes I found myself reading onto the next page thinking the poem was continuing since the formatting was very similar between pages and there are no titles, only to realize "oh wait this doesn't make sense" and have to go back and re-read the previous poem to figure out if it ended on Page A or Page B.
I thought the planet headers were an interesting idea, though I don't know what the intent was with that choice. Was it to lead up to the poem on pages 202-203? The poem about Pluto and Charon.
I like a lot of these poems in isolation, but as a whole it was taken down a little because of the organization and formatting.
Something I did love about this book were the illustrations, I thought most of them while not always being giant, helped make the poems feel complete and more clear. They were also just really well drawn.
I also appreciated the lost and found opening poems to each sections.
The strongest point about this series is definitely the more raw, stripped down poems that focused on talking more directly to the reader about the authors experiences and feelings. Big metaphors and comparisons are great and the author uses them well, but there are also times where you can get a message across with less being more.
I picked this book up because I'm taking a creative writing class and we're doing poetry right now and wanted some inspiration to draw from and the author didn't disappoint and made me have a better appreciation for the craft.