#AD #gifted | Thank you very much to Netgalley and Amanda Lovelace for sending me an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.
Before I begin, I want to quickly discuss intellectual snobbery. Just because a piece of art is accessible and is intended for a mass, mainstream audience, it does not mean that it is objectively bad. This “criticism” is mainly aimed at contemporary minimalistic poets.
Whilst intellectual snobbery thinly veiled as literary criticism is a MAJOR PROBLEM within the poetry community as a whole, do not fret, as this review is not here to bash Amanda Lovelace’s work because of it’s mass appeal – I am simply here to discuss my thoughts on the book itself. No intellectual snobbery here, just a bookworm!
This collection of poems is only the second collection of Amanda’s I have read, and although I definitely enjoyed it more than I enjoyed her debut, I still did not enjoy it very much.
I tried to come in with no expectations, but I still left feeling rather unsatisfied. Many minimalistic poetry tells a strong story or illustrates a message with few words, painting vivid images – similarly to micro-fiction and flash-fiction.
To me, a lot of the poems in this collection seemed to be lacking in their craft and technique, and although, at times, they conveyed strong messages, most of the time, they fell short of conveying those messages poetically – instead, most of the poem’s in the collection felt like motivational quotes, or instagram captions, or prose with line gaps.
If you were to read this collection, I would advise listening to the audiobook version, narrated by the author, rather than the ebook or hard copy edition, as although I found the poems themselves to be.
Dorothy's Bookshelf 