Review: A Valiant Effort
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 17, 2013
The Sojourn is a book that espouses lofty goals but sadly does not reach them. At least for me.The best thing I can say is that this is a beautifully designed book with striking imagery. I can also tell that it stems from the author's heartfelt emotions and is written with the best of intentions. It contains 35 poems that range in subject matter but are all approximately 16-20 lines in length, a bit less than a full page. Each poem is accompanied by an image appropriate to it's subject matter. I read the entire book in about an hour. There is a Lexicon section at the end that explores the symbolism of the various poems' topics which I found interesting.Did I find it enlightening? Transforming? Question answering? Perception changing?No.While inoffensive, I would put the poetry and content at a grade-school level of competency. Rupansh seems to try too hard to make every other line rhyme with the previous one, perhaps to the detriment of the content. Also, there seems to be a slight language barrier issue, evidenced by some of the word usage. That is even when the poetic license is taken into account. And there are instances where "big" words appear to be used for effect and don't seem to be a natural extension of the writing. Overall, this is not a bad compilation of poetry, but it seems more like a project done for a writing class rather than a mature exploration of life's deeper mysteries. There is an 'Extensions' book that appears to attempt some deeper analysis of the original text, but I am not sure of what real value it would hold.I was provided a digital copy by the author for review purposes. My copy also included an excerpt from his novel, "Pulchritude - An Eternal Love Story". The issue of English not appearing to be the author's native language is more strongly in evidence here.  Even so, there really wasn't enough of the tale included to create any interest in reading the full story.As poetry can be subjective, there is every chance that you might enjoy The Sojourn. Just don't expect it to live up to the life altering claims made by the author in the Forward or in Book Description above. 4 stars for the intent and motivations that went into this book, 2 stars for the result -- so I'm going with 3 stars.~ Kort