What We Leave Behind: Bloom & Grow is a collection of poetry about life, loss, and memories

 

Bloom & Grow

Peter J Donnelly

Alien Buddha Press, 2025

ISBN: 9798313441412

Ebook, 43 ppg.

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Bloom & Grow by Peter J Donnelly is not just a book of poetry; it is a book of memories. Of pets lost and people long gone. Of times spent enjoying meals and the company of others.

 

The book starts with memories of someone who never had pets. Why, the author supposes, is a mystery. We are presented with assumptions:

 

Was it the thought of a flap

on her back door,

saucers of food, milk

and water on the floor

of her kitchen with no utility area,

or heaven forbid, litter trays? (page 6)

 

Then the next poem is about a cat, Willow, that was once a part of the author’s life. It’s a sweet poem. Fur babies leave paw prints on our hearts long after they are gone.

 

The next poems are reflections of people who are now gone. The memories the author has of knowing them. The poem “The Morning of Your Funeral” on page 10 is about the arduous task of clearing away the things that belonged to a loved one. I have experienced such a thing, but my experience was not for the home of someone I was related to or someone I knew. It was a friend’s father, and as I did this, I noticed the calendar on the wall that was still on the month when he had been taken to the hospital, the records he probably enjoyed listening to, and the books he kept on shelves that he must have read or cited from time to time. All of those things were a part of this person’s life. So these lines in the poem were ones I understood:

 

Clearing your house was

like taking apart the pieces

 

of a completed jigsaw, but one that hadn’t

been recently done - the image

 

had been there for fifty years,

almost unchanged.

 

This poem makes me think about the things we leave behind after we pass away. Sometimes I wonder what will become of all of my own things. I already told my husband and kids that they are free to take of my stuff before passing it all on to other people in the family, but I always wonder about how hard such a task would be for someone who is essentially disposing of the things from a person’s life that MEANT something to them. Things that were important to them. How hard it must be to part with it all.

 

I am fortunate to have some things which once belonged to people no longer in this world, and I sometimes wonder how the people that owned them enjoyed them while still alive. Did my friend’s dad write letters at his desk, which is now in my bedroom? Did a friend often use a music encyclopedia which I now have in my living room, to look things up or for trivia?  

 

Are we ever attached to our possessions in the afterlife? I wonder about this too, because several years ago, my mom told me that she wanted all of my writing when I die, but she passed away first. I like to think she is able to enjoy all of my writing in spirit – even the boxes of writing that were left behind when I moved to Oregon. These thoughts came to me as I read the poem “Where It Hangs Now” on page 11, a poem which talks about a drawing that once belonged to someone which was “sandwiched between ivory paper,/its label folded over the top/of a cardboard window mat.” Here the author wonders if the original owner of this signed drawing would notice how it is now framed and:

 

we’ll never know what you think

of the frame I bought in Northallerton,

or the picture’s new home on the wall

of my entrance hall. It looks down

on your Chinese floor vase

and your small purple one

on the half moon table,

opposite the photo of you both

at Auntie H’s wedding.

I could say it’s as if you’re admiring it

but from the angle, it’s more like

your eyes are averted.

 

The title poem on page 13 is about two plant foods that had belonged to someone the author knew, whose plants he cares for now. Here he ponders:

 

but the one labelled Bloom

had less in it than the one labelled Grow.

Did you use more of it

or had you just had it longer?  

 

The author uses these thoughts as a comparison in how he cares for the plants and how discarding one after its use was a big moment for him, because it was “the first thing of yours I’ve thrown out.”

 

The other poems in this book are about reflections from the author’s life, how times have changed, as well as poems about food (I liked the one about honey). Sometimes the poem’s title answers a question the reader may have, or it states the thing the author won’t say in the poem.

 

Bloom & Grow is a collection of poems that I sincerely enjoyed reading. The poems in this book gave me a lot to think about, pondering the changing times just as the author does, while also reflecting on those once in my life who now exist only in my memories or their possessions I have in my home. The poems are written so well, drawing me in and taking me back to the past or on the streets of the United Kingdom. The poems in this book offer quality insights about our connection with people as well as attachments to things we leave behind. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading free verse poetry.

 

 

Five stars

 

 

 

 

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book as part of my digital subscription to Alien Buddha Press.

Horror So Real: Melancholia is a collection of dark poetry reflecting on real-life horrors

 

Melancholia: A Book of Dark Poetry

Sumiko Saulson

Bludgeoned Girls Press, 2024

Ebook, 95 ppg.

ISBN: 979-8990327719

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Collections of dark poetry can be about anything. They can be poems that are truly dark and disturbing, or they could be poems of dark things found in the real world. For Melancholia: A Book of Dark Poetry by Sumiko Saulson, it is both. Here readers will find dark poems of fictional creatures as well as dark poems about truly horrific events and goings-on that are in the real world, both past and present.

 

Not all of the poems in this book are dark, however. “The Doormouse Is Dreaming” is a cute poem. With descriptions of “Blankets and pillows/All covered with down” and “shallow waters puddle-wide.” I can almost picture the Doormouse dreaming while asleep, comfortably reclined on “handknit doilies.”

 

“The Child on the Lawn” was a sad poem to read. It reminded me of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old shot and killed by police when he was playing with a fake gun at a park. This poem is so profound, with lines like “Were there tears in his eyes/When he held his head down?” and “Now he's walking the streets/Though the guilty may hide/Their sanity is unwound/By the sound of his/Telltale Heartbeat.”

 

I loved how the poems “Replika, My Ex” and “Faceborg” explore our addiction with the internet/smartphones. Some of that addiction can be pretty terrifying, and there are no holds barred in these poems. These poems also touch on things many people fixated with this connection to artificial technology would understand.

 

I also liked the poems “The Queen of Death, Perplexed” and “The Melancholic Eye” and “Coachella Ghost.”

 

Many of the poems in this book are about real-life horrors as well as fictional horrors. Some of them are personal, while others are imaginative and dark. All of them are good poems and I enjoyed reading them.

 

Melancholia: A Book of Dark Poetry is an entertaining, thought-provoking collection of poetry that will leave readers with a sense of trepidation. Some of these poems will make readers think, while others offer reminders of how we cannot allow the injustices taking place in our society to continue. These poems are both haunting and depressing, leaving the reader with a lingering sense that perhaps it is time to do more to create change.

 

 

 

Five stars

 

 

 

 

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

“Those magic waves”: Turn Your Back on the Shore is a collection of poetry celebrating a love for surfing and love of life

 

Turn Your Back on the Shore: The Surf Poetry Collection by Scott Rosin

Scott Rosin

Independently Published, 2023

ISBN: 9798378904563

Ebook, 176 ppg.

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Have you ever had the opportunity to ride the waves with a surfboard? If so, and even if you haven’t, get ready to be out on those waves in the poetry collection Turn Your Back on the Shore: The Surf Poetry Collection by Scott Rosin. This collection of poems captures the magic and freedom of surfing, where everyone is equal and the waves make no judgment. The sea can sometimes be harsh, demanding, or cruel, but surfers understand her in a way no landlubber ever will, and love her in spite of it all.

 

I really liked the poem “Arrival.” It is a long poem but I was hanging on every word. It really drew me in and kept me reading. It’s a great poem! I especially liked these lines:

 

“When the big swells come

we walk the rock trail

down to the water

the old ocean beckons

surging and swelling

bawdy and flirting

crazy with power” (Page 12)

 

This particular poem really captures the surfer’s mindset, how the surfer will be “measuring ourselves/assessing strengths/shoring up weakness” (page 11) and when they take to the waves, “we are not the men/we were on the shore/no longer workers/husbands or fathers.” (Page 13)

 

I also loved reading the poem “Grom,” which talks about the author’s earliest fascination with surfing via his sister’s neglected surfboard. It’s no surprise to learn that, as a parent, he has instilled the same love for surfing into his offspring. In the poem “Vestiges” (another long poem, which I enjoyed reading), he talks about one morning when he and his son head out to go surfing. And then, when they are out on the sea surfing:

 

“We don't talk much on the water

my boy and I

the sea is not for chitchat

mundane nattering

 

The sea is its own endless poem

each canto

a rustling tide for the senses” (Page 27)

 

I also enjoyed reading the story in verse of “Smokey and Kit.” Yeah, there’s a lesson to be learned there. I understood the message: That surfers may HATE having to be away from the water for their jobs and responsibilities, but as much as they hate it, it makes the experience of being back out there on the water and surfing again all that much more sweeter and euphoric.

 

The other poems are about life, surfers come and gone, conversations with people as well as his personal relationships. They are all good poems and I enjoyed reading every one of them. As I read some of the poems that shared the magic of being out on the water – just you and a surfboard – I began to understand the meaning behind the title Turn Your Back on the Shore. It is on the shore where the real world is – life and all of its hardships, responsibilities and problems – but out on the water, all of that is gone. There’s no discussion about work or financial problems, no whining or drama, and no status or labels. To turn your back on the shore is to embrace surfer life and to answer the call of the water.

 

Turn Your Back on the Shore is an entrancing collection of poems that will sweep readers away right out onto the water with the surfer, where worries don’t exist and there is only the love of the ocean. The poems in this book celebrate the love of surfing and how the experience of surfing can add fulfillment to anyone’s life.

 

 

Five stars

 

 

 

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.