Review: Find your own color . . . at dawn.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 19, 2012
I do know Amber, we met on Twitter, and she's a laugh riot, with an honest heart, who is warm and bracingly original (My confession's up front, as honest as I can be); so, please, take what I say with your grain of salt.I love poetry. I read it. I wish I wrote poetry better. Amber risks much in sharing her poetic mindset with us in collected form. Amber displays her raw honesty in the work, along with a playfulness, and uses a patterned rhyme scheme with a majority of the poems. Her singular voice, mingled with the rhyme, entwine to beat out a steady, natural cadence.I read the poems in order, one a night, to catch the imagery and not let them speed by. I believe poems strengthen the more they are contemplated this way (again, only my opinion - and the same goes for short fiction), where the coloring of the next poem, or subject, cannot bleed into the next too much. (That said, there are poetry collections that are meant to be read as a whole . . . and Amber's collection IS meant to be read as a whole, all touching on the same or similar subjects of love, loss, giving of one's self completely, and finding, at times, that this yearning love is not returned.) Those poems centered on unrequited love were my favorites in The Color of Dawn.Amber reveals her heart, and it's a big one, and that is reason enough to buy her book.