So She Speaks by Madison Brandt is a short read that is more like a self help book for the author than it is as a poetry book. The author also manages a podcast where she has local people she knows over to talk about different subjects. I had a paramour look at the book and she took some time to do some research on Madison Brandt. I don’t really know much about Podcasts but maybe this ones for you, as for the poetry book itself I learned it was not for me very quickly- even though I found many of the elements to be very novel.
Madison does a good job of setting up her book to be completely her- dedicating the book to the reader with a poem (which may be a poem to herself, as I believe she is writing for herself and people like her) and gives the reader recommended steps in using her book. This is very pleasant compared to most poetry book openings I have read. This book is definitely hers.
Getting to the works themselves… I don’t really care for shape poetry. I get how it changes how you read it and it takes writing talent with a good vocabulary. My paramour enjoyed them a lot more than I did. I just don’t enjoy them. With a lot of the book being this type of presentation I immediately ran into a hard dislike. It also makes poems seem to flow into each other, poems don’t have a hard beginning or end and sometimes poems seem to start in the middle of a sentence. This is something that could be done well but just made a real issue when reading the book and feeling each poems purpose.
By page 21, I run into a “go back and read that poem again” poem. This is something I see online when we think something is so deep it demands more attention and thought then what we might give it briefly but its just so deliberately unnatural. Very early on she set the tone of a poet that I wouldn’t like to have a drink with. I can even feel her kneejerk response of being something like “You shouldn’t like a poet based off of if you’d like to have a drink with them”. I know right away we aren’t each other’s audience.
This makes it clear that I can’t review this book fairly, as its made for people who are nothing like me. It reminds me of poets who use a stage as open mic therapy, where the expression of the art piece is more important than the quality. You’d find her at the poetry readings where you aren’t allowed to give feedback.
Luckily the font was so large and the pages were half full so it made for an easy book to read through quickly.
She seems clever and has a good grasp of language so her future books might be better.
