1 out of 4 stars
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Writing poetry can be a wonderful form of self-expression, and reading poems can help us to see the world through the eyes of someone else. Poetry for Everyone to Enjoy is a collection of twenty-eight poems by Marina Guerrero. The poet describes her perspectives on various subjects including love, relationships, and family. There are also poems about loss, pain, and hurt.
All of the poems in this book are written with an acute frankness about the subject. This is a refreshing approach to poetry writing because the true meaning of many poems is typically hidden behind flowery language, and embellished descriptions. One might argue that the best poems are written with these features, but I really appreciate that I could easily grasp the main gist of each of Guerrero’s poems. Unfortunately, this was the only redeeming quality of the book.
Most of Guerrero’s poetry is written in the free verse style. This style of poetry does not follow an explicit rhyming scheme, but I can’t help but think that a consistent rhyming scheme could have made some of the poems more interesting. Although some of the poems are written about thought-provoking subjects like war, sex and death, they are not captivating at all. To me, the poems actually seem to be very basic descriptions of these broad topics. If the words of some of the poems are typed in a paragraph instead of a poetic layout, it would be very difficult to distinguish that is actually a piece of poetry. Moreover, the poems fail to evoke emotions. The poems entitled, ‘Bully’, and ‘Friendship’ are two such examples.
There are also inconsistencies with the spelling of certain words. In modern poetry, it is normal to adopt chat abbreviations like ‘u’ to mean ‘you’, and ‘y’ to mean ‘why’. Guerrero uses a lot of chat abbreviations in her poems, but they are not consistent throughout the book. Both forms are used which makes it seem like the chat abbreviations should count as errors. This is seen in the poems entitled ‘Sex’, and ‘Beauty’.
Not counting the inconsistencies with the chat abbreviations, there is a multitude of other grammatical and spelling errors in the poems. Examples include ‘crept’ which is spelled ‘crypt’, and ‘sit’ which is spelled ‘seat’. Moreover, neither page numbers nor a table of contents is included in the book. A cover page bearing the title of the book and the poet’s name is also missing. This leads me to believe that this book is not professionally edited.
Due to the uninteresting nature of the poems, the inconsistencies of the use of chat abbreviations, the errors, and the missing introductory features of the book, I rate this book 1 out of 4 stars. Once these have been rectified, adults who like simple, concise poetry may find the book enjoyable. Despite the book’s title, the sexual content of one poem makes the book inappropriate for younger readers.
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Poetry for everyone to enjoy
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