Winther’s poems mostly take the lyric form, though haikus punctuate the collection also, offering a structural rhythm that allows the different types of poems to harmonize. Some even approach prose territory, but those are some of the weakest selections in Winther’s collection, falling into a stream-of-consciousness that’s not as sharp or revealing as the tighter verses. The strongest passages often prove moving while offering flashes profundity and grace that will reach readers due to their raw vulnerability and honesty: “you swallowed me whole // I just didn't notice.”
In the loss of love, heartbreak and grief is all-consuming; as she writes in “Love’s Illusion,” “Oh, the pain of a love betrayed // A symphony of heartache, never to fade,” yet the despair is never total, and each of these pain poems ends with a hopeful refrain. Phoenixes rise from ashes in Winther’s poetry again and again, and the collection as a whole is a manifestation of the speaker’s rebirth following her destructive heartbreak. The act of writing, of confessing, of making is an act of healing. As Winther writes, “mending, I find peace.”
Takeaway: Vulnerable poems of a journey through love, heartbreak, and catharsis.
Comparable Titles: Amanda Lovelace, Rupi Kaur
Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: B
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A
Review from BookLife:
Ink and tears fuel Winther’s forlorn yet hopeful collection that marks the speaker’s transition from love to heartbreak to transcendent catharsis through the making of poetry and art. The book itself feels like a purging of pain and loss that results in a spiritually and emotionally cleansed renewal. Winther draws on Eros to describe “a love so fierce, we dared not speak,” as if language’s limitations and impurity would soil it; in Winther’s “moment of pure love and sweet surprise,” words paradoxically both have no place and illuminate the distinctions of what love even is, whether it’s “A sanctuary found in each other’s eyes” or that “true fulfillment” found in “the act of giving.” Yet unlike Eros and Psyche, such loving unions in Winther’s poems often tend not to last, souring in a mire of abuse and infidelity.
Winther’s poems mostly take the lyric form, though haikus punctuate the collection also, offering a structural rhythm that allows the different types of poems to harmonize. Some even approach prose territory, but those are some of the weakest selections in Winther’s collection, falling into a stream-of-consciousness that’s not as sharp or revealing as the tighter verses. The strongest passages often prove moving while offering flashes profundity and grace that will reach readers due to their raw vulnerability and honesty: “you swallowed me whole // I just didn't notice.”
In the loss of love, heartbreak and grief is all-consuming; as she writes in “Love’s Illusion,” “Oh, the pain of a love betrayed // A symphony of heartache, never to fade,” yet the despair is never total, and each of these pain poems ends with a hopeful refrain. Phoenixes rise from ashes in Winther’s poetry again and again, and the collection as a whole is a manifestation of the speaker’s rebirth following her destructive heartbreak. The act of writing, of confessing, of making is an act of healing. As Winther writes, “mending, I find peace.”
Takeaway: Vulnerable poems of a journey through love, heartbreak, and catharsis.
