Official Review: Of Illusions and Ink Spills

[Shazywithbooks]

It's a good review, great job. For me, sitting and reading poetry is just hard. Those who love poetry and it's mysteries will enjoy.

[ellgeetee]

So often I encounter poems that seem inaccessible to the every day reader due to the flowery language that is used, and from your review it sounds like a fair bit of such language is used. I appreciate the honesty and your perspective of wanting poetry to not just be “spoon-fed” however I think a lot of wonderful poetry that I’ve enjoyed has had easy to follow language that requires you ponder the true meaning of the text instead of just the words written.

[Orionsoft]

A very beautiful title i must confess, Although, poetry aint my thing but you actually delivered wonderfully

[amber_tracz]

I agree with this! Poems are pleasing to read when they have elaborate language, but sometimes authors use words in the wrong context just because it flows well. It's important to have a balance between flow of the word choice and meaning!
Thanks for your review, very well written!

[Aurmakk]

That was a really helpful Review, beautifully structured. I, myself, rarely have the patience for poetry but the way i see it, some of them, poems, are only "unlocked" in a way when your feelings and the poets' feelings finally match. So, maybe pondering on it, at the moment you read it won't help much... either you resonate with the feelings behind the words or not. Now i d love to ponder on some of them, poems, myself but the Free sample has only the table of contents and to be fair, even with 4/5 stars and since i'm not much into poetry anyways, can't really say this whole thing clicked with me.

[1234Park]

It is good when you have challenges in what you find interest, mostly for inquisitive people. Nice poems even if I didn't understand all :-*

[Katreadsbooks]

Re: EXPAND VIEW OF ILLUSIONS AND INK SPILLS
The poetry is masterful. The depth of the words bring out what emotion she is expressing. It makes you feel a connection. Maybe bringing a deeper connection to ones self. I enjoyed it. I would read this.

[Katreadsbooks]

I enjoy this kind of poetry. Your review was great.

[Nelsy Mtsweni]

I like reading poems and I found this book of poems to be just amazing, the author/poet is really amazing at letting their creativity flow out. The word choice and the rhyme just made the poems so interesting. I loved that!
Thanks for the review, it was detailed and understandable.

[stedape]

A book of a collection of poems. This is a nice change of pace, especially when the author seems to be positively defiant in her writing. I should read this soon.

[Barbara Joan]

understanding poetry is understanding of ones heart because it is the outflow from the heart. poetry wasn't really my thing, I wanted to learn how to write or understand it but what I ended up understanding was 'you don't learn poetry, just open your heart and you will Understand all literature is about' a free verse mostly occurs when it flies from the heart

[ayoomisope]

I'm not really into poetry myself, but Of Illusions and Ink Spills seems to be a great read. I love the diverse themes explored. I might read this soon.

[Ochieng Ariba]

I admit failure when it comes to poetry. I just don't belong to this world although it's a wellspring of wisdom. The free sample wasn't as complicated as claimed by the reviewer although I trust the review. Somewhere ahead the contents must have been more complex.

[udovictor]

Very nice expression, the most important aspect of poetry is the understanding of writers point of view.

[P Reefer]

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Of Illusions and Ink Spills" by Divya Hirani.]

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3 out of 4 stars

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Of Illusions and Ink Spills by Divya Hirani is a collection of free-verse poetry. There are approximately sixty poems in this collection, and they range in length from almost a full page to only four lines. At the beginning of the collection, an introduction is provided by the author that describes herself as a ‘young professional immigrant in a foreign land.’ However, any person, young or old, will have no trouble connecting with the themes and words written within the pages of this collection.

The poetry itself doesn’t follow any set standards. Many of the poems are free verse, some employ rhyming meter, but most do not. The author tends to use elaborate wording, which worked most of the time but felt overdone in some places. Additionally, there were some wording choices along the way that gave me pause, as their meaning was unclear given the context. For example, on page 48, the line ‘My witchen subconscious’ eluded me. Similarly, on page 57, the line ‘Tell tale till going kaching’ was baffling and difficult to decipher. Moreover, the collection is missing a table of contents, which became irksome when I wanted to return to a specific poem.

The element of this collection that stands out the most is the author’s distinct voice. The author’s tone is strong and unwavering, and the more of the poems I read, the more I could paint a picture of her defiant and questioning personality. It was enjoyable to see the author resonating from the pages of the collection instead of getting lost in overly wordy or meandering prose.

For the most part, the themes in these poems are clearly conveyed to the reader. Poems dealing with monotonous daily routines, fitting in with the world and with your peer group, questioning society’s rules, questioning faith, reinventing one’s self, and familial relationships were all relatively easy to decipher. However, there were a few poems in the collection that were more difficult to interpret. This isn’t a collection of poems that can be read once and easily understood; for many of the poems, I had to read them multiple times and really ponder their meaning before I could come up with some type of message or theme, whether intended or not by the author.

For this collection, the things I disliked about the poetry also ended up being some of my favorite aspects of the author’s work. Many of the poems were difficult to decipher, yet I found that I thoroughly enjoyed the amount of thought it took to fully understand the themes and messages of these poems. Too often, the meaning of poetry is spoon fed to the reader; that is not the case with Hirani’s work, and for that I happily award this book 3 out of 4 stars. I chose to forgo a four star rating because of the use of some indecipherable words in places that distracted from my overall understanding of the author’s words, and the lack of a table of contents. For poetry fans that enjoy collections that make you think about everyday life and questioning of societal standards and faith, I highly recommend this book.

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Of Illusions and Ink Spills
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Like MarisaRose's review? Post a comment saying so!

I enjoyed this frank overview of Hirani's poems. Her collection of poems deal with a multiple of subjects mainly in a satirical tone. Some of her indecipherable words appear as an experimentation with the fusing of words as well as alluding to popular names without using the actual word as in witchen.