“The Princess Saves Herself in This One”
Written by Amanda Lovelace
Review written by Diana Iozzia
This poetry collection serves its purpose of
allowing poetry to speak about serious topics, while disguising them behind metaphors
and allusions. The poetry collection’s overarching theme centers around
folklore and fairy tales. In using these types of imagery, Lovelace feels
comfortable and artistic in speaking about depression, suicide, death, eating disorders,
abuse, rape, and more. This book felt very disingenuous throughout certain
poems, making the poetry feel as if the Lovelace wanted to evoke certain emotions
but was unable to do so. Her poems sound very childlike in sweetness and fun
examples, but then turn dark and uncomfortable. I personally call this “sweet
and sour” poetry.
I understand that poetry can be very subjective. It’s
great that Amanda Lovelace has created from her heart and poured out her
emotions. However, I think most of them seem like she was trying to hard to be edgy
and too hard to be interesting. Her women empowerment poems feel to me like
they’re just written for the sake of appeasing others. They don’t feel natural.
Her poetry is very modern, with its style, page
layout, and titles. The poems have creative names but they feel a little over
the top. For example, “It Was Like Coming Home After a Long, Long Day”, “I Am
Not Strong Enough for Anything”, and “I May Not Believe in Fate, But I Believe in
You”. I enjoyed a good half of these poems, but the ones I did enjoy were good.
I did not fall in love with Amanda Lovelace’s poems. I would like to continue
reading her other poetry collections to see if I enjoy her further progress and
development as a writer.
My favorites from this collection are:
“Skin & Bone”
“I’ll See You in California”
“Young Love”
“You Left, But You Stayed”
“My Most Loyal Lover”
“My Steel Thorns”
“The Only One Who Will Never Leave”
“Forever a Collector of Words II”
“You Never Even Got Picked”
“You Are My Home”
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