Review: Poems of love and life, spiced with the smell of salt spray.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 2, 2014
“By the Sea:  Poems of Love, Longing and Lust” is my second foray into the poetic world created by Feng Zhou.  While his first offering, “Find Yourself:  A Poet’s Journey” was fraught with pain and disillusionment – this compilation is full of Life.  Like the title portrays this is an effort of Love, Longing and Lust.  It is all of this - wrapped between gossamer words and lace alliterations.Varying in length and in style, each poem can be read as a stand-alone piece, for each individual poem has a purpose and a point.  However, taken together they form a whole lattice work that supports this work and paints a scene of salty spray, sea breezes, missed love, found love, treasured love and inescapable kisses.  Written entirely from a male aspect, the unknown female, sometimes an unattainable object of desire, sometimes a lifelong companion – is loved.  Deeply and completely, the authors love for this individual, be she of flesh and blood or of salt and sea, is apparent and seeps through the pages.I found several new favorite pieces that I know I will return to again and again to offer inspiration to my heart, but the one that spoke to me the loudest was ‘I am the Minute Hand, and You are the Hour Hand.’  What a simple and complex approach to understanding what makes loves work.  Always together, each striving for the same purpose, but each finding their own way – or as Zhou pens:“Both Lives exist in the same time and space, despite having different paces.”A great addition to any library and a worthy compilation to introduce poetry to those not already enthralled.