
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
While I have never been a particular fan of free verse poetry, there were some poems hidden within Balroop Singh’s collection that did appeal and speak to me. Perhaps it was the education I received, when a pupil of a boy’s grammar school in the 1950s/60s, that continues to influence my preference for poems with a particular meter and a recognisable rhyme and/or alliteration and assonance. That said I persisted throughout my reading of ‘Moments We Love’ looking for, and occasionally enjoying, poems that stirred either memories or moments. There were quite definitely several verses that I found profound and emotional. With an individual poet’s collection one tends to look for links between different poems and for many pages of the book ‘love’ was so very obvious. I realised the clue was in the name of the book!
Unfortunately, for about half the book I found so many references to love, in all its multifarious forms, rather tedious after a while. It was understandable for Ms Singh to include her heartfelt and skilful references to romantic love but I found my thoughts shouting out ‘OK, I get it! Love hurts and heals sometimes – but enough already!’ This, together with my past experience as both student and teacher, had my sensibilities crying out for punctuation. I want to know whether the creator of verses and stanzas, stories and even tomes, had paused or even stopped in their tracks, in the same parts as myself. Did their emotions chime or synchronise with mine? Admittedly, punctuation did appear sometimes but it produced surprise from this reader as it felt out of context when considered and compared to the overall ‘free’ tenor of the style of virtually all the poems. When Balroop Singh stepped outside of her intense concentration of the ‘self’ and considered the wonderful world of nature, I began to really appreciate the emotions of awe and wonder expressed in her own special way.
My particular favourites were: Memories and Moments; Moments that Glow; Drifting Apart; Redwoods; I Dived in to Discover; Nature Lover; Wishes; Fortitude and I Feel Most like Me.
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