I decided to give another poetry collection a shot. I’ve been seeing this one everywhere, and I’ve always been tempted to pick it up and go through it. I mean, it’s quite short and it’s been getting a lot of attention…. so I finally did. Here is my review:
This is a poetry collection divided into four different parts: the princess, the damsel, the queen, & you. The first 3 sections detail the life of the author, expressing love, loss, grief, healing, and empowerment. The section titled you serves as a note of encourage to the reader and all of humankind, to inspire us all to live life kindly.
Let me begin by saying that I liked this collection of poetry better than Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur. I thought that this one discussed a lot of themes like suicide, eating disorders, self-harm, abuse, and of course, being brokenhearted and picking yourself up. The raw emotion was easier to feel and connect with in this collection and I really liked that there was a positive note at the very end. However, the same issue as with Milk and Honey was present here: meaningless lines that told nothing, and a great deal of wasted space. For every really good poem/entry, there were 3 that I barely glanced at. While I don’t require poems to rhyme, I do have a problem when it is literally just one sentence separated by spaces. That’s not a poem, that’s a sentence. Breaking it up that way doesn’t really do anything. And while I liked the first 3 sections, the last one, in which the author seems to be trying to encourage the reader to be brave and stand up for themselves …. well, it was lackluster. The content wasn’t anything that I hadn’t heard of, and that was expected, but I thought it would be presented in a more unique way. After having poured so much raw emotion into this poetry collection, I would have hoped some of that would be in the last section, too. Instead, you was very bland and frankly, could have been omitted. I think that, while the content was intense and the emotions poured into this collection should not be dismissed, I am not a fan of this form of poetry. There isn’t really any depth to it and it has no proper flow or form. For those reasons, I’m giving this a 2.5/5 stars.
Happy reading ~