3 out of 4 stars
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Reading for Life was a chapbook filled with poems written by Malaika Gilani. The e-book was twenty-two pages in length and contained sixteen poems. The subject matter of the poems centered around a strong sense of loneliness and despair with an emphasis on heartbreak. It contained poems that both directly and indirectly delivered the subject matter. The poet would sometimes use a figurative topic, such as fire or animal cruelty, to still indirectly get the point across of the despair felt.
My favorite poem was “Fire”, which compared the expectations to the reality of being a girl which was symbolized by a fire. The comparisons were made that as a girl might be hard to resist touching, the world better keep their distance. A girl might be “beautiful yet dangerous” as well as “tame yet murderous”.
The poem that I wanted to hate because of the way it made me feel was “Animal Cruelty”; it was a disturbing representation of the way the Malaika Gilani viewed events in the world. The poet took the dogs’ perspective wondering what it must be thinking after every blow, if things might have happened differently if it could just vocalize that it was sorry, and if dogs could cry. “Animal Cruelty” provided good insight on the outlook of the poet and how the loneliness revealed in prior poems is truly affecting her thought process.
The main negative feature of this chapbook was the “1850 Gold Rush” poem. I didn’t understand why it was included in this collection and I was distracted from the subsequent poem, as I was still trying to understand the connection of this piece to the rest of the collection. The poem incorporates a matter-of-fact tone and doesn’t give any room for thought or feeling like the others did.
I would recommend this chapbook to all poetry lovers. I would give a warning to individuals that feel depressed or negatively about life, that the poems contained in this collection are might be damaging because they do not offer a sign of hope as they are more of an outlet for the poet. They capture the poets’ current manifestation instead of the journey through the feeling.
I would give Reading for Life 3 out of 4 stars. I enjoyed the simple flow the individual poems held, which made it easy to follow along with, for a reader with not much experience reading poems. The aspect that held it back from a four star rating was the grammar, “when r u gonna (sp)” that revealed to the public the poets young age, as if she was writing these poems as text messages and the inclusion of the “Gold Rush 1850” poem that didn’t seem to fit with the poet or the collection.
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Reading for life
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