Review: Voices In The Air

Read if you like: authentic, heartfelt poetry that speaks to the soul.

Voices In The Air | Naomi Shihab Nye

Series: N/A

Genre: Poetry
Released: February 13th 2018
Pages: 208
Format: Ebook
Source: Publisher

Acclaimed and award-winning poet, teacher, and National Book Award finalist Naomi Shihab Nye’s uncommon and unforgettable voice offers readers peace, humor, inspiration, and solace. This volume of almost one hundred original poems is a stunning and engaging tribute to the diverse voices past and present that comfort us, compel us, lead us, and give us hope.

Voices in the Air is a collection of almost one hundred original poems written by the award-winning poet Naomi Shihab Nye in honor of the artists, writers, poets, historical figures, ordinary people, and diverse luminaries from past and present who have inspired her. Full of words of encouragement, solace, and hope, this collection offers a message of peace and empathy.

Voices in the Air celebrates the inspirational people who strengthen and motivate us to create, to open our hearts, and to live rewarding and graceful lives. With short informational bios about the influential figures behind each poem, and a transcendent introduction by the poet, this is a collection to cherish, read again and again, and share with others. Includes an index. 

To read this book, every day I took a few minutes of quiet time. It became a ritual to read these poems of love and resistance and frustration and love. There are poems I loved and poems I didn't, but I loved the simple act of reading them either way. Worlds and lives come to life in these pages, in such few words and sparse lines - I want to read more.

4 stars

Review: Women of Resistance

Read if you like: celebrations of femininity and diverse experiences & poems that make you equal parts understood and unknowable.

Women of Resistance: Poems For A New Feminism | Various Authors

Series: N/A

Genre: Poetry
Released: March 13th 2018
Pages: 204
Format: Ebook
Source: Publisher

A collection with a feminist ethos that cuts across race, gender identity, and sexuality.

Creative activists have reacted to the 2016 Presidential election in myriad ways. Editors Danielle Barnhart and Iris Mahan have drawn on their profound knowledge of the poetry scene to put together an extraordinary list of poets taking a feminist stance against the new authority. What began as an informal collaboration of like-minded poets—to be released as a handbound chapbook—has grown into something far more substantial and ambitious: a fully fledged anthology of women’s resistance, with a portion of proceeds supporting Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Representing the complexity and diversity of contemporary womanhood and bolstering the fight against racism, sexism, and violence, this collection unites powerful new writers, performers, and activists with established poets. Contributors include Elizabeth Acevedo, Sandra Beasley, Jericho Brown, Mahogany L. Browne, Danielle Chapman, Tyehimba Jess, Kimberly Johnson, Jacqueline Jones LaMon, Maureen N. McLane, Joyce Peseroff, Mary Ruefle, Trish Salah, Patricia Smith, Anne Waldman, and Rachel Zucker. 

A rousing collection of poems. As much a celebration of womanhood as it is a call to arms.

5 stars

Review: The Poet X

The Poet X | Elizabeth Acevedo

Published by: HarperTeen, March 8th 2018

Genre: Poetry, Contemporary

Pages: 368

Format: Ebook

Source: HarperTeen, via Edelweiss

A young girl in Harlem discovers slam poetry as a way to understand her mother’s religion and her own relationship to the world. Debut novel of renowned slam poet Elizabeth Acevedo.

Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking.

But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers—especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about. With Mami’s determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself.

So when she is invited to join her school’s slam poetry club, she doesn’t know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out, much less speak her words out loud. But still, she can’t stop thinking about performing her poems.

Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.

Fans of Jacqueline Woodson, Meg Medina, and Jason Reynolds will fall hard for this astonishing own voices novel-in-verse by an award-winning slam poet, about an Afro-Latina heroine who tells her story with blazing words and powerful truth.

This was so different to what I expected, and I loved it. Beautiful form, stark and aching poetry, and pretty damn awesome characters. All the things I like. 

I loved Xiomara, and I felt for her so much with all the things she had to deal with. She's just a girl trying to muddle through being a teenager, discovering herself and her passion and boys. At its heart this book is about questions, and love - familial love, romantic love, and especially self love. 

I LOVE novels in verse but my usual problem is they don't end, they just stop - but this book has an actual ending, and it made me so happy to have that closure, to know there's hope for the characters and their lives. This book is honestly so well done. I'm very happy I read it, even if it hurt me towards the end. I want to read more from Elizabeth Acevedo.

Characters ★★★★☆

Setting/world ★★★★☆

Writing ★★★★★

Review: Wild Embers

Read if you like: poetry that will touch your heart and heal your weary soul.

Wild Embers | Nikita Gill

Genre: Poetry
Released: November 16th 2017
Pages: 160
Format: Ebook
Source: Publisher

They have lightning in their souls, thunder in their hearts, chaos in their bones.

Nikita Gill's poetry has captured hearts and minds all over the world; her inspirational words have been shared hundreds of thousands of times online, been plastered across placards on international women's marches and even transformed into tattoos. This collection will showcase mostly unseen poetry and prose, delving into ideas about passion, identity, empowerment and femininity.

Equal parts haunting and inspiring. I love these poems of self love, healing, and trauma. This is an essential book for anyone who has ever been broken or bruised. It will mend your heart and help you rebuild yourself

4 stars

Review: Bone

Bone | Yrsa Daley-Ward

Published by: Penguin Books, September 26th 2017

Genre: Poetry

Pages: 176

Format: Ebook

Source: Penguin, via Netgalley

From the celebrated poet Yrsa Daley-Ward, a poignant collection of autobiographical poems about the heart, life, and the inner self. 
 
Bone. Visceral. Close to. Stark.
 
The poems in Yrsa Daley-Ward’s collection bone are exactly that: reflections on a particular life honed to their essence—so clear and pared-down, they become universal.
 
From navigating the oft competing worlds of religion and desire, to balancing society’s expectations with the raw experience of being a woman in the world; from detailing the experiences of growing up as a first generation black British woman, to working through situations of dependence and abuse; from finding solace in the echoing caverns of depression and loss, to exploring the vulnerability and redemption in falling in love, each of the raw and immediate poems in Daley-Ward’s bone resonate to the core of what it means to be human. 
 
“You will come away bruised. 
You will come away bruised
but this will give you poetry.”

I love this so much. This is one of those books I'm going to go back and read again and again. It's just so ... visceral, so real. It cuts right through the bullshit to the heart of everything - family, sex, relationships, femininity. I knew I would like this book but I really, really love it. It's one of those books that touches your soul. (Plus it's queer poetry, which I am ALWAYS looking for.)

Writing ★★★★★

Review: Moonrise

Moonrise | Sarah Crossan

Published by: Bloomsbury Children's, September 7th 2017

Genre: YA, Contemporary, Poetry

Pages: 400

Format: Ebook

Source: Bloomsbury, via Netgalley

'They think I hurt someone. 
But I didn't. You hear?
Coz people are gonna be telling you
all kinds of lies.
I need you to know the truth.'

Joe hasn't seen his brother for ten years, and it's for the most brutal of reasons. Ed is on death row.

But now Ed's execution date has been set, and Joe is determined to spend those last weeks with him, no matter what other people think ...

From one-time winner and two-time Carnegie Medal shortlisted author Sarah Crossan, this poignant, stirring, huge-hearted novel asks big questions. What value do you place on life? What can you forgive? And just how do you say goodbye?

This book was so sad. I expected it to be full of grief but it was just SO sad and lonesome. The premise itself was really unique and interesting and just heartbreaking, with the main character's brother on death row. But he was so alone throughout much of this and that really came through the poetry and the language. I like how the book wasn't a hundred percent about Joe's brother, that there were elements of life outside that, and there was a bit of a romance but not too much to detract from the heart of the book. My only niggle is I wanted justice for Ed, wanted the killer to answer for the crime, but I still like the ending. 

This book is so pure and sad and honest that it hurts.

Characters ★★★☆☆

Setting/world ★★★☆☆

Writing ★★★★☆

Review: Loving Vs. Virginia

Loving Vs. Virginia | Patricia Hruby Powell, Shadra Strickland

Published by: Chronicle Books, January 31st 2017

Genre: Historical, Non Fiction, Poetry

Pages: 260

Format: Ebook

Source: Chronicle Books, via Netgalley


Written in blank verse, the story of Mildred Loving, an African American girl, and Richard Loving, a Caucasian boy, who challenge the Viriginia law forbidding interracial marriages in the 1950s.

This book is written with such care and detail and emotion, it's impossible not to be moved. The art is perfect for the story and, with the photographs and quotes mixed in, brings the story to life as well as grounding it in reality. This is a beautiful book about an ugly story of prejudice, cruelty, and racism. The poetry is sparse and high impact, and the whole story is so memorable for it. Highly recommend.

One (ARC Review)

One | Sarah Crossan

Published by: Greenwillow Books, September 15th 2015

Genre: YA, Contemporary, Poetry

Pages: 400

Format: Ebook

Source: Greenwillow Books, via Edelweiss

Tippi and Grace share everything—clothes, friends . . . even their body. Writing in free verse, Sarah Crossan tells the sensitive and moving story of conjoined twin sisters, which will find fans in readers of Gayle Forman, Jodi Picoult, and Jandy Nelson.

Tippi and Grace. Grace and Tippi. For them, it’s normal to step into the same skirt. To hook their arms around each other for balance. To fall asleep listening to the other breathing. To share. And to keep some things private. The two sixteen-year-old girls have two heads, two hearts, and each has two arms, but at the belly, they join. And they are happy, never wanting to risk the dangerous separation surgery.

But the girls’ body is beginning to fight against them. And soon they will have to face the impossible choice they have avoided for their entire lives.

Everything you will hear about this will be true. One is poignant and moving and unflinching. It is just, unfortunately, not the greatest book for me. I could go on about how I connected with the characters but never cared much, about how the story was important but I wasn't all that interested, how the romance felt depth-less, but let me tell you about the writing instead. Because that is where I fell in love with this book.

Sarah Crossan writes free verse like a master. Seriously. Her way with words is astounding, and sometimes left me a little speechless. I have huge parts of this highlighted, and more than ten poems bookmarked, because I just fell in love with how it was written and I know I will go back and read those parts again and again. So while I didn't love everything about this, I can find no regret that I read it, and I will always remember One.

This story didn't resonate with me as much as it should have done, as much as it will with you, but for the writing alone I have to own and cherish this book forever. Read this book - you won't regret it! (Well, you might, at the end, when you're crying...)

Characters ★★★☆☆

Setting/world building ★★★☆☆

Writing ★★★★★+

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