2.5
I don't think this rating is too fair, considering there were some poems I enjoyed. but looking at the collection as a whole, there were more that had me looking to see how long I had left to read. And usually I like to read a little bit of poetry at a time, but I think the poems didn't captivate me enough to for me to do that.

I liked the incorporation of bees into the poems, honey as poetry but I wish that all of the poems stuck to the bee theme and we went in depth with the analogy of bees, nature and the ecosystem to talk about some of the topics touched on in this book like climate change, the grief over losing a mother, the west's invasion of Iraq. That being said, I did enjoy some of the whimsy poems that didn't relate to bees like John Barleycorn, character personifying barley from Scottish folklore. But barley is still a plant, a part of nature so I wish the collection had more of a focus on nature, especially the ones bees frequent.

I'll be checking out more from Carol Ann. I remember studying her as a child, and I want to revisit some of the poems I studied. I do love their style of poetry, I just want to read poetry that is either more in depth and/or with more of a focus on a certain theme if the title alludes to it having one.

That being said the poems I enjoyed and would like to reread as often as I can are:

Ariel
Politics
John Barleycorn
Spell
The bee carol
Crunch