"All We Saw"

“All We Saw”

Written by Anne Michaels

Review written by Diana Iozzia

           

            Recently, I’ve been really getting back into reading poetry. After a great booktuber recommended R.H. Sin’s books, I read many of them. I also decided to read more, and then more poetry. I stumbled upon “All We Saw” by Anne Michaels. This is a very small collection of slightly angsty, slightly confusing, slightly naturalistic poetry. I personally tend to read natural, simple, and romantic poetry, so this had a slight step in the right direction.

            I honestly dislike rating poetry, because I feel that poetry is so different to everyone who reads it, especially modern poetry. I am personally rating this, as I read it, not for quality or for recommendations. I just couldn’t really get into it. Many of the poems in this collection were very long and not so cohesive. I enjoyed some parts of poems more than the poem entirely, so to best describe what I liked, I am listing the page numbers and/or name of the poem.

Pg. 14 from ‘Sea of Lanterns’.

‘Somewhere Night is Falling’, this is a great, long poem that each sentence starts with ‘somewhere’. I am a fan of form poems, so I enjoyed this as well as ‘To Write’.

‘Five Islands’.

Pg. 42 from ‘Bison’

Pg. 64 from ‘There Was a Distant Sound’

            The design of the book kind of bugged me. For a very small poem book, you could probably contain all of the poems on maybe six printed pages. Yaaaaay, what a great use of dead trees… Anyway, the cover image is fitting, the book without the cover is as well. Other than that, this book was a mixed bag. I enjoyed certain poems and enjoyed certain lines. I think I’ll be passing this along to a friend. I enjoyed this for what it was worth, but I don’t think I’ll be continuing to keep this in my collection.

            I received a complementary copy for reviewing purposes.