Review: A heartbreaking work of staggering variety
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 14, 2013
This short selection of poems skirts across the whole range of human emotion, from love and hearbreak to anger and remorse, and all the way up the slippery slope to unbridled joy. You'll find yourself alternately in tears and seething with anger at the pain that can be inflicted on a child. All in all, I really enjoyed this collection of poems, and I'm sure most readers will be able to pick out something that they can relate to. I know I certainly could. Although there is a lot of pain embedded in these words, there are also dark, smothered undertones of hope and redemption, which come through occasionally like rays of sunlight through an oppressively dark raincloud.There are thirteen poems in this collection, and each one is distinctly crafted, honed down like a brick under a chisel to bring pure, raw emotion without extraneous words that would otherwise jolt the reader out of the experience as surely as being smacked in the face with a pillow, no matter how soft. Many modern poets get bogged down in a seemingly universal quest to use the most words possible. This stands apart from that crowd of excess by instead focusing on the BEST words possible. Sometimes a sentence can be distilled down to a single pregnant word that more perfectly purveys the emotion the author wishes to express.In doing this Jane Walsh has managed to do what so many other poets of our time have come short of: Write a series of emotional poems that are actually a pleasure to read. There's no wishy washy avant garde mess here. No lines that read like the confused projectile vomit of a dictionary that has had too many Tequila Sunrises. No waterfall cornucopia buried under sunshine cinderblocks, or such mess. Just pure, unadorned poetry meant to express emotion, and succeeding in every instance. If you're a fan of poetry this is a great collection to pick up. The price is right, and they are perfect for spending an afternoon reading and rereading a few times.On a final note, outside of the actual poetry, the book itself is well formatted and I had no issues reading it on my Kindle. With the rise of self publishing, there are a lot of amateur poets who simply copy and paste scraps of Notepad scribbles into a single Word document and then upload it and call it a book. There was some actual planning involved in this, and I think most readers will appreciate that fact as they read through it. I have no regrets about buying this poetry collection.