3 out of 4 stars
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“...And poetry just / A way for him to bleed - / Release.”
Normally I would open a review with a clever comment on the meaning or purpose of poetry before going into my thoughts on the collection I just read, but the above lines, taken from “The Poet,” open this reflection quite well.
Poesy in Blood: A Life in Words is a collection of poetry written by Art Immured. The collection comprises 56 poems. The poems range in both topic and format. Some have short lines, some have long lines, some are rhymed, and some don’t rhyme; there are even haikus in this collection. The subjects focus on various things including love, loss, life, sex, abuse, and more. If I were to label Art Immured, I would say that Immured is a confessional poet; the writer does not shy away from sharing their emotions and thoughts on all these topics.
I liked the openness of the poetry. As the opening line of this review says, poetry is a way to bleed, and Immured does not mind following Ernest Hemingway’s advice to sit at a typewriter and bleed. The emotions are so strongly conveyed in some of the poems that I often had to take a break while reading as I knew the exact emotions the poet was describing; their words would take me back to when I was younger and dealing with all the emotions and angst I was too young to put into words properly. The variety is both a pro and con. There were some poems with Spanish and the haikus had Japanese titles; it does show the flexibility of Art Immured’s writing style.
Poetry is personal, and therefore, hard to critique at times unless you’re a professor looking to see if your students followed the new format correctly. There are no set rules for punctuation but I did notice a misplaced apostrophe in a poem. The variety, as I said before, is both a pro and a con for this collection. While it flaunted Immured’s creativity, it also felt too varied at times. Going from poems about death and perseverance to Spanish poems about love to haikus felt disjointed at times. The collection would have had a better flow if the topics had not been so varied.
I rate this collection 3 out of 4 stars. It is a solid display of poetry writing and a creative expression of the poet’s thoughts on real life and the emotions that go with it. I’d recommend this to any fan of poetry, but I would also have to caution those who are overly emotional or sensitive as they may feel overwhelmed by the sadness of some of the poems like “Toy Box Requiem” and “Unraveling” or uncomfortable at the sultry love scenes written about in poems like “Chamber Music” and “Aberrant Fetish.” While I found myself enjoying the shorter-lined poems more, overall, this was a satisfying read and I look forward to more from this author.
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Poesy in Blood: A life in words
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