White Eyelash (Grove Press Poetry Series): Poems Book

I bought this book at 50 pesos (a little over 1 dollar). I really liked the cover, and the title The White Eyelash immediately captured my fancy. I was starting to have an idea about what pieces would be inside, thinking I would relate to them immensely.

I was wrong.

This wasn't written by a young woman or a teenager. This was written by an adult, and most of the poems echoed this. The first section (entitled Blurring Myself) I could relate to a little, as it circled a lot about not knowing yourself enough and a bit of death. The same goes for the next section, which delved deeply on the matter of things "near the end" - maybe death, maybe the demise of a relationship. There was a section which focused a lot about her experience with her mother, who was admitted in the hospital. Although I couldn't relate much on that part, I liked the sincerity of the poems and the voice she employed. It gave a vivid picture of the health institution and the state of her mom.

I really couldn't choose a single poem that I like, or had really affected me. When I write about poetry books, I tend to look at it more personally than I do in prose. Instead of ranting about the rhythm or the meter or the style, I usually rate the collection depending on how the book had stirred emotions within me, on how it affected me. Sadly, The White Eyelash isn't my thing and it really isn't my cup of tea.

Furthermore, at the beginning I liked how the rhymes turned up in the most unexpected places, so that the effect is beautiful and almost hypnotic, especially when read out loud. However, as the book progressed, there was too much rhyme for my liking that it tend to ruin the effect and inevitably made the poems somewhat monotonous.

All in all, it really isn't that bad. It's just a matter of preference, I suppose. Apparently, Susan Kinsolving's poetry just isn't for me.