3 out of 4 stars
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Official Review: Bleeding Gull: Look, Feel, Fly , by Raed Anis Al-Jishi.
Bleeding Gull: Look, Feel, Fly is a collection of poems. There are just under ninety poems in the volume, and the poems are quite short. Many of the poems are less than ten lines. The shortest is only three lines. Many of the poems do not rhyme, and the meters vary greatly between the poems.
The subjects of each poem are very diverse. They range from “A Summer Day,” to “Burgundy,” to “Motivation of Death,” to “Innocent Eyes,” to “Tunisia,” to “An Affair,” to “Beirut Nights,” to “Crucified Languages,” to “Martyrs,” to “Autism Girls.” The directions that the poems take are quite mixed. Some of them address the subject directly, others reflect an emotion or an experience connected to the title.
Aside from the brief contact information at the end of the book, there is very little information provided about the poet behind the work. This makes for an interesting reading experience. Many of the poems appear to be providing some sort of insight into the author’s mind– or perhaps more accurately, the author’s heart, but it is unclear exactly what is being said and what specific emotions are being expressed. After reading this collection of poems, I got the sense that I was reading a very personal expression of art and inspiration, and though I could easily detect the insight, passions, and feelings that form the power behind the poems, I realized that I had no clue as to the character of the artist behind the work.
There are little hints that may cast light upon the author. Or perhaps they refer to someone else, or a fictional character. I don’t know. There’s no way of knowing. Lines like “A broken man / Hangs with broken things” from “Hanging Out” and the line “Some grief can’t end / Till it hurts you more / Than you bear to speak” from “Grieve” indicate that the author seems to be channeling some deep sorrow into the poems.
Individually, the poems are so brief that most of them have very little impact, at least initially, though many of them briefly shock the reader with an intense phrase. As a whole, the collection leaves the author an enigma, but the emotions expressed in the poems are quite real, understandable, yet mysterious and impossible to concretely identify. This volume of poems creates an indelible impression, with love and loss deftly intertwined and mixed with numerous observations on the little things that make up life.
I give this book three out of four stars.
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Bleeding Gull - look, feel, fly
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