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lisannedewolff 's review for:
Wild Embers: Poems of Rebellion, Fire and Beauty
by Nikita Gill
Finding it difficult to rate this book because poetry is so personal.
The majority of these poems just didn’t resonate with me.
Style-wise the poems were all very straightforward and read more like quotes or short anecdotes than poetry. I would’ve liked to see more ambiguity, wordplay, wit or clever rhyme.
Content-wise most of the poems were fairly generic. (With the exception of the reinvented fairy tales and myths. I liked reading those). None of them felt powerful or evoked strong emotions in me though.
Most of the poetry in this book, if not all, is feminist. Now some of these feminist poems seemed to move from advocating gender equality to expressing a kind of anti-male bias that I’m not a fan of. (Not sure if these were the author’s intentions or if it’s just my interpretation).
I’m all for sisterhood and equality, but female domination (as tempting as it sounds) is not the way to go.
While this isn’t my kind of poetry there were still some passages that deserve to be mentioned:
“You cannot burn what has always been aflame.”
“And yet in the fairytales we tell our children, we first introduce [Belle] as beautiful rather than fierce, kind, independent, intelligent, giving, full of light and powerful. Even her name is a testament to outward beauty.”
“And I still wonder, 10 years later, if the lesson she learned for standing up for herself was that no one comes running to protect little girls when it is little boys they are standing up against.”
“Why do we shame Pandora for opening the box, when she simply did it out of curiosity?
Shouldn’t we rather blame the person
who created a box
of such terrible power
as we should blame society
for making rules for our bodies
that we never agreed to,
nor wanted to be our philosophy.”
The hunt for poetry books continues.
The majority of these poems just didn’t resonate with me.
Style-wise the poems were all very straightforward and read more like quotes or short anecdotes than poetry. I would’ve liked to see more ambiguity, wordplay, wit or clever rhyme.
Content-wise most of the poems were fairly generic. (With the exception of the reinvented fairy tales and myths. I liked reading those). None of them felt powerful or evoked strong emotions in me though.
Most of the poetry in this book, if not all, is feminist. Now some of these feminist poems seemed to move from advocating gender equality to expressing a kind of anti-male bias that I’m not a fan of. (Not sure if these were the author’s intentions or if it’s just my interpretation).
I’m all for sisterhood and equality, but female domination (as tempting as it sounds) is not the way to go.
While this isn’t my kind of poetry there were still some passages that deserve to be mentioned:
“You cannot burn what has always been aflame.”
“And yet in the fairytales we tell our children, we first introduce [Belle] as beautiful rather than fierce, kind, independent, intelligent, giving, full of light and powerful. Even her name is a testament to outward beauty.”
“And I still wonder, 10 years later, if the lesson she learned for standing up for herself was that no one comes running to protect little girls when it is little boys they are standing up against.”
“Why do we shame Pandora for opening the box, when she simply did it out of curiosity?
Shouldn’t we rather blame the person
who created a box
of such terrible power
as we should blame society
for making rules for our bodies
that we never agreed to,
nor wanted to be our philosophy.”
The hunt for poetry books continues.