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brice_mo 's review for:
A Little Daylight Left: Poems
by Sarah Kay
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC!
Sarah Kay’s wonderful A Little Daylight Left covers a lot of ground for such a tiny book—it’s a group of poems culled from the decade following the poet’s previous collection, and the intervening years offer a rich selection of themes, precise language, and memorable imagery.
It’s unfortunate that these pre-release reviews aren’t supposed to include quotes because Kay’s writing is defined by the kind of off-the-cuff depth that punctuates a great conversation with friends. You know the ones—where you’re all rambling about nothing in particular until someone absentmindedly stumbles into a bit of wisdom that will stick with you forever.
A Little Daylight Left is filled to the brim with that kind of emotionally focused insight.
There’s a humility at play here, both personally and poetically. Kay opens with “A Bird Made of Birds,” a piece that celebrates her own limitations and argues that poems can’t compare to real life. These poems are designed to be approachable, and they speak to the poet’s background in spoken word—if a poem doesn’t bring people together, then what’s the point?
As much as I love the book, it certainly has a few of the quirks one might associate with spoken word poetry, and readers will likely have mixed feelings. For example, a recurrent device is to open lines with ampersands, and while that yes, and energy lends momentum and a welcome cadence to performed poetry, it does the opposite in print here—disrupting and deflating Kay’s rich language and imagery. Similarly, the spoken word influence also means that most of the poems have a very similar build to a mic drop-style turn, which distracts a little bit from the strength of the language itself. Finally, while the time between collections guarantees that each individual poem is carefully crafted and memorable, it makes the book as a whole feel a little unfocused. Think of it more like a playlist than an album.
Despite these minor critiques, A Little Daylight Left is so winsome in its earnestness that they feel almost irrelevant. In “Worth Celebrating,” we read about the way snow has broken otherwise fatal falls, with the speaker noting that nature’s destructive power can also be generative. “Table Games” is another remarkable piece—a pun-laden recollection of a breakup at Whole Foods. It’s sweet-spirited and achingly specific, and like every other poem in the book, it will either invite readers in with its simplicity or frustrate them with its bluntness.
A Little Daylight Left might resonate most with Sarah Kay's spoken word audience, but I think most people will find something to appreciate here, so I recommend checking it out, even if you don't consider yourself "a poetry person."
Sarah Kay’s wonderful A Little Daylight Left covers a lot of ground for such a tiny book—it’s a group of poems culled from the decade following the poet’s previous collection, and the intervening years offer a rich selection of themes, precise language, and memorable imagery.
It’s unfortunate that these pre-release reviews aren’t supposed to include quotes because Kay’s writing is defined by the kind of off-the-cuff depth that punctuates a great conversation with friends. You know the ones—where you’re all rambling about nothing in particular until someone absentmindedly stumbles into a bit of wisdom that will stick with you forever.
A Little Daylight Left is filled to the brim with that kind of emotionally focused insight.
There’s a humility at play here, both personally and poetically. Kay opens with “A Bird Made of Birds,” a piece that celebrates her own limitations and argues that poems can’t compare to real life. These poems are designed to be approachable, and they speak to the poet’s background in spoken word—if a poem doesn’t bring people together, then what’s the point?
As much as I love the book, it certainly has a few of the quirks one might associate with spoken word poetry, and readers will likely have mixed feelings. For example, a recurrent device is to open lines with ampersands, and while that yes, and energy lends momentum and a welcome cadence to performed poetry, it does the opposite in print here—disrupting and deflating Kay’s rich language and imagery. Similarly, the spoken word influence also means that most of the poems have a very similar build to a mic drop-style turn, which distracts a little bit from the strength of the language itself. Finally, while the time between collections guarantees that each individual poem is carefully crafted and memorable, it makes the book as a whole feel a little unfocused. Think of it more like a playlist than an album.
Despite these minor critiques, A Little Daylight Left is so winsome in its earnestness that they feel almost irrelevant. In “Worth Celebrating,” we read about the way snow has broken otherwise fatal falls, with the speaker noting that nature’s destructive power can also be generative. “Table Games” is another remarkable piece—a pun-laden recollection of a breakup at Whole Foods. It’s sweet-spirited and achingly specific, and like every other poem in the book, it will either invite readers in with its simplicity or frustrate them with its bluntness.
A Little Daylight Left might resonate most with Sarah Kay's spoken word audience, but I think most people will find something to appreciate here, so I recommend checking it out, even if you don't consider yourself "a poetry person."