theradioghost 's review for:

Your Soul is a River by Nikita Gill

2.0

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Unfortunately, cliched imagery and line breaks do not by themselves a poem make. And what really disappointed me about this book is how unpoetic everything in it actually is. Nikita Gill's work just doesn't in any way read like poetry, and even if it did, it wouldn't be good poetry. The only fit comparison I can think of is that it's like someone very pretentiously typeset my middle school diary with the intention of leaving as much empty, wasted space on the page as possible. Your Soul Is a River is arranged in eight sections according to which already-overused metaphor will be repeated over and over ad nauseum; I can't help feeling that her time would have been better spent writing eight good poems that felt like more than thirty seconds each had been spent on them. Two stars rather than one only because it's utterly lackluster rather than actively unpleasant, and because every now and then something salvageable pops up.