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kyatic's Reviews (974)
So, this isn't a poetry book. It's a self help book, which is fine, but that's all it is. The words in here don't work as poetry, and I'm saying this as someone who's a fan of short-form poetry in general, a la Nayyirah Waheed and Warsan Shire. There just doesn't feel like there's any real artistry here. The language is overly simplistic and inspirational, exactly like you'd find in a generic book of affirmations, and some of the phrasing is so clunky that I struggled to read the poems aloud. Lovelace uses 'for' as a conjunction a lot (e.g. 'I already have my hands full, for I'm busy saving the world') and it's such an archaic conjunction that it really jarred. I liked a lot of what this book had to say, but not how it said it. It felt very rushed and as though not much effort at all had been put into crafting each poem. It reads like a book of first drafts.
That said, I do like Lovelace's use of poem titles to subvert the meaning of the poem. I thought that was usually cleverly done, although this was popularised with Nayyirah Waheed and Rupi Kaur before her, so I'm not sure I can count it as a mark of specific artistry here. Still, it made some of the blander poems more enjoyable. And when I say 'blander poems', I mean ones like this:
'canceled plans
make her sigh in relief.'
That's it. That's the entire poem. Sorry, but I really don't see any effort or attempts at using language there. It's the kind of thing you can jot down in your notebook at lunchtime in literally 6 seconds, and then never look at again. Here, let me try:
'she said no
because it was more freeing
than saying yes.'
Am I a poet now?
I will say that this is a helpful and beautiful book for young people to have, especially with the illustrations. The physical copy will be a great addition to a lot of young people's bookshelves. Some of the lessons it has to teach young girls are really important, especially about knowing your own worth (although I think that it does occasionally sink into toxic positivity, especially when it advocates an almost entirely self-focused ideology) and I think that if this was marketed more along those lines, more of a self help book or a book of affirmations, then I would be all for it. As poetry, however, it left me completely cold.
That said, I do like Lovelace's use of poem titles to subvert the meaning of the poem. I thought that was usually cleverly done, although this was popularised with Nayyirah Waheed and Rupi Kaur before her, so I'm not sure I can count it as a mark of specific artistry here. Still, it made some of the blander poems more enjoyable. And when I say 'blander poems', I mean ones like this:
'canceled plans
make her sigh in relief.'
That's it. That's the entire poem. Sorry, but I really don't see any effort or attempts at using language there. It's the kind of thing you can jot down in your notebook at lunchtime in literally 6 seconds, and then never look at again. Here, let me try:
'she said no
because it was more freeing
than saying yes.'
Am I a poet now?
I will say that this is a helpful and beautiful book for young people to have, especially with the illustrations. The physical copy will be a great addition to a lot of young people's bookshelves. Some of the lessons it has to teach young girls are really important, especially about knowing your own worth (although I think that it does occasionally sink into toxic positivity, especially when it advocates an almost entirely self-focused ideology) and I think that if this was marketed more along those lines, more of a self help book or a book of affirmations, then I would be all for it. As poetry, however, it left me completely cold.
