My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This collection of poems from Mona Soorma is a seemingly endless journey of sadness and I thought at one point that I would be unable to plod on towards the final verse. However, the poet’s skilfully imaginative use of words and metaphor in so many of her verses managed to keep me reading, feeling emotional and wanting more. So many of the poems are about fading hope, times past, lost love and a broken heart that one wonders when recovery can ever be found. But there are lighter moments to be found occasionally and Mona Soorma shows an uncanny ability to see meaning in her every observation of events or mundane action. I particularly enjoyed ‘Life-Breaths’; ‘Espy’; ‘Love and Dust’ (quote: Love lay lost along a lonely path/ Like a forlorn fallen rose…) and ‘Nostalgic’ (quote: I’ve seen the sky stretch its limbs/ In sinuous allure/ Gathering darkness within its being…).
While I realise that poetry is often “in the eye of the beholder” I would have been more comfortable with this anthology if I had seen more evidence of the, often very helpful, application of punctuation marks. Even after reading certain verses more than once the correct places to pause or breathe for longer/shorter periods of time escaped me regularly. Maybe it’s my age or traditional education but it’s something that adds to my appreciation of the written word – even verse.
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