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sssummer 's review for:
Planting Gardens in Graves III
by r.h. Sin
Ok, let's talk about this.
This is going to be a mean review, and although the author will never see this I'm scared to write it anyway as he is active on Goodreads. But I'm doing this for Daphne. Do not read this review if you liked the book or are not Daphne (as if anyone else was going to anyway lmao.)
(Disclaimer: I'm not rereading this review so sorry if some of it doesn't make sense.)
So there were some passages that I did like, I liked "The Letdown", "soul break", "near day" was ok, as well as "rock bottom". That's the whole list, out of like 180 "poems", that I enjoyed reading. I think the title is kinda cute too.
I also think I haven't had similar life experiences to this author and furthermore, who am I to critique poetry when this is legitimately the first poetry book I've ever reached for. However, if this is poetry then maybe I should submit one of my high school journals for publication.
Dead seriously though, many of these passages could have come straight from my own previous self-reflections and self-advice. This is mostly because many of said "poems" are incredibly vague and generic.
For Example:
"Always Never"
A woman
will never need
to chase after a man
who truly wants
to be a part of her life
Ok, fine. Great idea, though I have heard it a million times before and have myself said it a million times before. In fact, my housemates have "SPERM CHASES THE EGG" written on our kitchen whiteboard and frankly I find it more poignant/poetic than this version. (Also, there is a great movie on this entire idea called "He's Just Not That Into You", a 10/10 movie.) This degree of genericism is probably 80% of the poems in this book. Which, granted, could make this a useful book for some people. Although even still I'd sooner recommend Pinterest (The book is 24.99$ in Canada!!! For 15 minutes of my life I'll never get back! Crazy) I had bookmarked a lot of these, the more "general statements of fact" ones, but can not find it in me to list them all. It's just ideas like "I struggle to take the advice I give" and other useless low-hanging fruit.
"Archives"
My poetry is an archive
of heartache and disappointment
Yes, we can tell. Is this the section that was supposed to be for the back of the book? What is this? (also, why is the actual quote on the back of the book by some other poet?) This poem made me question if maybe the book was a parody or brilliant satire that was going over my head, and I am genuinely still somewhat wondering if that's what it is. This book is a good case of Poe's Law.
"Do it now" was also terrible. This was generic advice, but bad generic advice. I'm not going to type it out because it surmounts what the title is with no depth, or perspective, or anything interesting to support the idea that you should "do it now".
The lowercase "i"s? Is that a general poetry thing or just this author?
Some of the poems, such as "too many illusions" and "other" felt really unjustifiably negative. I also think the tone of the book overall was very negative (other than a few self-love and acceptance poems), but you'd hope a book named "planting gardens in graves" would maybe be a tiny bit more optimistic?
It did end on a decently high note, but I still did not love the author's mindset. This opinion is definitely subjective and has more to do with personal taste. These days I'm thinking of trying to be more optimistic, but I'm not looking forward to it (haha, ba-dum ching! Sorry that was terrible).
"ready" was horrifying, made me laugh out loud. "on repeat" ("sex doesn't keep people, they cum and they go.") also made me laugh out loud. I don't know if it was supposed to be funny or not though.
"Angry women" was potentially problematic? Imagine if you switched the word "woman" for "man". "An angry man is powerful... an angry man is beautiful..." sorry why is there beauty in anger? What is this? Why are we romanticizing this?
Even if I disagree with the sentiment, the idea could be better thought out or articulated because I don't really feel like I know what he's going for. Anger when justified could be potentially thought of as beautiful, but nothing in these lines alluded to anything that could serve as justification or at least allude to some type of justification. I'm definitely overthinking this. Especially considering I don't think the author even though it over as much.
Not to mention all the preachy woman stuff was already questionable and finding out the author was a man, made some of it not sit right with me. I literally feel like he's either pandering really hard to women, as they are his demographic, or straight-up mocking the more extreme feminism found in a lot of internet culture these days.
A lot of it felt very self-serving, which is ironic because he has a poem labelled "self-serve" that actually preaches self-love. I recommend he looks up the definition of "self-serving", but potentially this is the wink I was looking for to prove this is all more self-aware and brilliant than it seems.
(Hopefully, this poem is actually a critique of some of the bs and unhelpful "self-love" advice you can find on the internet because some of it is genuinely bad advice and rightfully should be critiqued. That is a whole other conversation though.)
If it is all to be taken sincerely, then a lot of these poems come across very...narcissistic. Another example would be this line where he's like "Saying goodbye is like knives...I've cut so many people." What is this edgy teen bs? Like ok, so your mindset is that you're this huge loss to people...? I'm not doing a good job of illustrating the (albeit mild) narcissism point I'm trying to make, might edit this review later with cross-references to my philosophy and psychology notes if I find it within me. But more than any particular line, the book feels immature.
The author ended with "the end..." is that also a poetry thing? I really feel like this is a genius satire or some guy taking the piss with us all.
This book (in my opinion) is why people make fun of poetry, and the only way it can be redeemed is if it is actually making fun of itself.
If you prefer swimming in the shallow end of the pool, this book is for you.
This is going to be a mean review, and although the author will never see this I'm scared to write it anyway as he is active on Goodreads. But I'm doing this for Daphne. Do not read this review if you liked the book or are not Daphne (as if anyone else was going to anyway lmao.)
(Disclaimer: I'm not rereading this review so sorry if some of it doesn't make sense.)
So there were some passages that I did like, I liked "The Letdown", "soul break", "near day" was ok, as well as "rock bottom". That's the whole list, out of like 180 "poems", that I enjoyed reading. I think the title is kinda cute too.
I also think I haven't had similar life experiences to this author and furthermore, who am I to critique poetry when this is legitimately the first poetry book I've ever reached for. However, if this is poetry then maybe I should submit one of my high school journals for publication.
Dead seriously though, many of these passages could have come straight from my own previous self-reflections and self-advice. This is mostly because many of said "poems" are incredibly vague and generic.
For Example:
"Always Never"
A woman
will never need
to chase after a man
who truly wants
to be a part of her life
Ok, fine. Great idea, though I have heard it a million times before and have myself said it a million times before. In fact, my housemates have "SPERM CHASES THE EGG" written on our kitchen whiteboard and frankly I find it more poignant/poetic than this version. (Also, there is a great movie on this entire idea called "He's Just Not That Into You", a 10/10 movie.) This degree of genericism is probably 80% of the poems in this book. Which, granted, could make this a useful book for some people. Although even still I'd sooner recommend Pinterest (The book is 24.99$ in Canada!!! For 15 minutes of my life I'll never get back! Crazy) I had bookmarked a lot of these, the more "general statements of fact" ones, but can not find it in me to list them all. It's just ideas like "I struggle to take the advice I give" and other useless low-hanging fruit.
"Archives"
My poetry is an archive
of heartache and disappointment
Yes, we can tell. Is this the section that was supposed to be for the back of the book? What is this? (also, why is the actual quote on the back of the book by some other poet?) This poem made me question if maybe the book was a parody or brilliant satire that was going over my head, and I am genuinely still somewhat wondering if that's what it is. This book is a good case of Poe's Law.
"Do it now" was also terrible. This was generic advice, but bad generic advice. I'm not going to type it out because it surmounts what the title is with no depth, or perspective, or anything interesting to support the idea that you should "do it now".
The lowercase "i"s? Is that a general poetry thing or just this author?
Some of the poems, such as "too many illusions" and "other" felt really unjustifiably negative. I also think the tone of the book overall was very negative (other than a few self-love and acceptance poems), but you'd hope a book named "planting gardens in graves" would maybe be a tiny bit more optimistic?
It did end on a decently high note, but I still did not love the author's mindset. This opinion is definitely subjective and has more to do with personal taste. These days I'm thinking of trying to be more optimistic, but I'm not looking forward to it (haha, ba-dum ching! Sorry that was terrible).
"ready" was horrifying, made me laugh out loud. "on repeat" ("sex doesn't keep people, they cum and they go.") also made me laugh out loud. I don't know if it was supposed to be funny or not though.
"Angry women" was potentially problematic? Imagine if you switched the word "woman" for "man". "An angry man is powerful... an angry man is beautiful..." sorry why is there beauty in anger? What is this? Why are we romanticizing this?
Even if I disagree with the sentiment, the idea could be better thought out or articulated because I don't really feel like I know what he's going for. Anger when justified could be potentially thought of as beautiful, but nothing in these lines alluded to anything that could serve as justification or at least allude to some type of justification. I'm definitely overthinking this. Especially considering I don't think the author even though it over as much.
Not to mention all the preachy woman stuff was already questionable and finding out the author was a man, made some of it not sit right with me. I literally feel like he's either pandering really hard to women, as they are his demographic, or straight-up mocking the more extreme feminism found in a lot of internet culture these days.
A lot of it felt very self-serving, which is ironic because he has a poem labelled "self-serve" that actually preaches self-love. I recommend he looks up the definition of "self-serving", but potentially this is the wink I was looking for to prove this is all more self-aware and brilliant than it seems.
(Hopefully, this poem is actually a critique of some of the bs and unhelpful "self-love" advice you can find on the internet because some of it is genuinely bad advice and rightfully should be critiqued. That is a whole other conversation though.)
If it is all to be taken sincerely, then a lot of these poems come across very...narcissistic. Another example would be this line where he's like "Saying goodbye is like knives...I've cut so many people." What is this edgy teen bs? Like ok, so your mindset is that you're this huge loss to people...? I'm not doing a good job of illustrating the (albeit mild) narcissism point I'm trying to make, might edit this review later with cross-references to my philosophy and psychology notes if I find it within me. But more than any particular line, the book feels immature.
The author ended with "the end..." is that also a poetry thing? I really feel like this is a genius satire or some guy taking the piss with us all.
This book (in my opinion) is why people make fun of poetry, and the only way it can be redeemed is if it is actually making fun of itself.
If you prefer swimming in the shallow end of the pool, this book is for you.