3 out of 4 stars
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Passion, Love, and Tears: Poems by L. R. Camacho is a set of poems about the stages of love. The poet speaks to the world at large and asks questions about passion and acceptance. The poems convey a degree of melancholy and ponder upon questions about lasting relationships, bringing into focus the timeline of love in the poet’s perspective.
In the beginning, the poems are a touch sad, speaking about not expressing feelings and losing love. As the book progresses, the tone shifts to a happier one, with poems on what love can be. The poet tries to give a modern touch to the poems, and the stanzas are arranged in freestyle. The poet also takes a lot of leeway with the formatting of poems, but the unique style does bring out the poet’s process, lending strength to the writing. The poems are touching and they connected with me, as I expect they will with most readers.
I appreciate the connections made by the poet between consecutive poems. The book reads like a plotted narrative and I could not put the book down until I finished it. The smooth transitions between varied perspectives and themes of individual poems must have been difficult to achieve, and I applaud the poet for achieving it beautifully. The book has a decent pace and there were no major formatting errors that distracted me from the writing.
The summary of this book mentions that the poems focus on LGBT+ relationships. Before I started the book, I did imagine I would read an inspiring set of referenced poems to LGBT+. It was disappointing to find that apart from a few poems with the nameless heroine referring to a woman in the context of love, I did not find any reference to LGBT+, blatant or otherwise.
However, the most disappointing thing about this book was the glaring lack of metaphors. While the poet does a good job of including descriptions within the poems, no allusions are made to external sources of inspiration or reference. I usually look forward to poetry with a certain degree of the poet’s personality depicted by the metaphors chosen to be included in the poems. This aspect was missing and took away from my enjoyment of the book.
Overall, this collection of poems feels well written and edited. I give Passion, Love, and Tears: Poems 3 out of 4 stars. Although the book veers off the road of traditional poetry styles, I think it has a good set of poems infused with a sense of realism and belonging. I would recommend this book to lovers of modern and love poetry.
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Passion, Love, and Tears: Poems
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