Review: Quiet, sensual, will leave you longing for more.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 24, 2014
I finished Feng Zhou's Find Yourself and, because I loved it, didn't even wait a day before I bought this collection, sat down, and read it all at once.If you're interested, you can read the review I left for Find Yourself. It mentions some similarities, like a forward by the author which delves deeply into his perspective on poetry. I did neglect to mention previously that there is a click-able Table of Contents in both books so you can navigate to your favorites with ease. I'll move on now to this particular collection and spell out the goodness within.As the title suggests, By the Sea is filled with prose about love, longing, and lust. Your mind overflows with the vivid scenes Feng Zhou paints and the emotions they invoke. At times you'll experience a pure, eternal passion, and in others the yearning for such. He writes often of unrequited love and I like to imagine his muse is tethered by a thin silvery string which transverses the ocean, their souls bound together in eternity.While each poem was a pleasure to experience, a few resounded in such a way they found a nook in my heart. "I So Yearn for That Kind of Time" is a splendid example. A couple embarks for a day at sea, where they reminisce about the past, present, future. They share once youthful dreams and how reality altered them. They laugh; live in the moment completely, allowing the day,and then the sunset, to come to them. The narrator longs for that memory, though he hasn't experienced it. I think it's a perfect reading for couples celebrating an anniversary; the day where they make promises for the next one to be better. Inevitably they get caught up in the rat race, and a yearning for that kind of time gets filed away. A gentle reminder it's never too late to seize the day.I read "I am?" and found the narrator to be heroic. He doesn't save anyone from a burning building or disaster, but creates a protective force field around the woman he loves. He's been through hell, but wouldn't dream of burdening her with those memories. And it's not because she isn't capable, but rather because his love for her happiness is greater than his past experiences. His undying devotion is repaid, ultimately, by her simple existence and the joy it brings him.I believe anyone with a heartbeat, whether it's racing with hope and possibility, or steadfast in the comfort of an everlasting love, will envision themselves in this collection. It would make a wonderful gift for your beloved and I plan to read it again and again.