My favorite book by Saul. Brilliant.

My favorite book by my favorite author. I cannot see myself parting ways with this book at any time... Especially since it is signed by THE man himself. "May these words bring worlds." The back story behind this book is that Saul is documenting the demise of his first marriage to Marcia. He deals with the two of them growing apart, the sick ways of their love, his nature, her nature. In the book he places blame on her saying "she is the reason...." "she is the problem..." and he eventually realizes he is the root of she and he is the one who is ruining things.

Everyone can relate to this. Problems in your life seem to be exasperated by the blame you place on everyone else. Its not until there is acceptance that one can move on.

Saul Williams is AMAZING!

i can see why people would call saul williams a (more talented) precursor to instagram poets like rupi kaur and michael faudet, but i just cannot for the life of me get into this kind of scaled back, minimalistic poetry

Simple concept; no center of gravity; but still some gorgeous lines. And love the interplay between the text and image.

what can i say? i love his work and he was one of the first poets who inspired me tremendously. this collection traces the course of a failing relationship. beautiful, mind-blowing poetry.

my favorite stanzas:

i once visited a lost world
where black men with broken necks
held the hands of charred women

they shared a love
that was as beautiful
as it was incestuous...

I seldom read poetry. It's not that I don't like it. I simply require a context in which to put myself to properly read it. So sitting at home on my couch isn't that context. But it's what I had, so I made due. Sadly, that means I didn't give Mr Williams HIS proper due, because it would have been better had I taken him to a cemetery or the lake or something.

I discovered him totally by accident on Pandora. And I liked what I heard. And then friends recommended him to me. So I hunted down this book. And it's a lovely little book.

The poems vary in length. Some are a few pages (never very many), and some are a line or two. The shorter ones reminded me of the Waukegan Pepsodent Conundrum, by a certain G.V.--interesting, pointed, a bit obscure--but it's poetry, so you can usually infer the emotional intent.

And the emotional intent behind most, if not all, these poems, is melancholic, tragic, a bit lovelorn. One, I do believe, is about molestation, and utterly heartbreaking.

I will continue to hunt down Mr Williams' writings.

This was so beautifully written and captivating. I enjoyed all of the messages and how they were intertwined.

I first discovered Saul Willams through his hip hop albums and really liked his sound. His books (poems) are unique and fun to read. I used to carry this around with me just in case I had a few extra minutes to sit down and read.

I picked this up after WhittyNovels recommended it so enthusiastically in her Cram-a-thon vlogs and it was definitely one of the better modern poets that I read... Far better than Rupi Kaur's work even though the themes are roughly the same (relationships, loss, self-image etc.)

Saul Williams has a way with words, there is no denying that. Some of these poems evoked very strong emotions within myself and I couldn't help picturing the scenes and feeling things (that I maybe didn't want to feel). One poem specifically (p.23ff) completely blew my mind.

This collection starts off very promising with a dedication to "all the ghosts and corpses that shall never know the breath of our children" - WOAH, talk about vivid language.

"most relationships are built on faults. i do not wish to place blame. but there are houses that crumble with the slightest tremble of the earth." - Saul really manges to completely suck you in, he is a very authentic poet & I believed every word he wrote. He chose to discuss a lot of different themes in this collection, even though he focused mainly on LOVE, he was also very self-relective: "there is a gathering in the forest. the leaves have refused to change. they say that they are tired of things never remaining the same."

Some of these lines are very raw and emotional ("i presented my feminine side with flowers / she cut the stems and placed them gently down my throat") and some of them are simply picturesque ("she stuck a bokmark in my heart and walked away") - I can definitely see that these poems are #relatable for a lot of people and therefore I can appreciate them a lot more. Personally, I am not big on romance and also not very experienced in relationships, therefore it is a lot harder for me to really identify with the narrator.

One poem that stuck out to me in particular goes as follows:

n  she asked that i remove my dreams
before entering her home
one cannot enter a courtroom bearing arms

i had decided
to sharpen the egdes
of a certain childhood fantasy
and tuck it away in my sock

emotional lavishness
can deplete memory banks
although her parents saved and saved
she knew no baptism
which is no fault
unless you have
a Christian name

i do not trust her
my plan was to attack
in the 43 seconds
that it takes eyes
to adjust to moonlight
after lights out

no one told me
that dreams glow in the darkn

The poem about rape and victim blaming was literally too much for me ("and if you rub your fingers / ever so softly / on her inner thigh / she'll stop you / having branded your fingertips / with the footprints of her brother / the disbelief of her mother / and her sister / who called her a slut for sleeping")... like honestly this made me soo uncomfortable, angry, ready to throw up and ready to throw punches. THIS IS WHAT POETRY NEEDS TO BE LIKE. Yes, it made me think about things I really don't wanna think about but damn it made me THINK.

Saul also touches upon the subject of growing up and living up to everyone's expectations. A topic
that I could relate to much better ("Q: are you going to follow in your father's footsteps? / A: my father's footsteps lead to my mother's bed where i spent much of my childhood / why return where i have already been?") OR ("i am still / but seldom silent")

There are a dozen more beautiful lines and flipping through these poems again really makes me consider bumping this rating up to 4 stars because hot damn SAUL CAN WRITE, man! My big issue (with all poetry collections really) is that I only really enjoy half of the poems, the other half are always very forgettable, unrelatable and simply not as good. So even though there are some breathtaking lines in here and Saul is definitely a very talented writer (and I'll probs check out more of his work) it is still a hit or miss collection for me.

I will revisit this collection in the future because whilst flipping through this again I fell in love with it all over again and there is lots left to discover!

cemeteries
are our only
tended gardens

we tend to die

Not my cup of tea. There's some strong images and some clever wordplay, but very little of substance that I could find. Another reviewer connected it to superficial Instagram poets, and I can definitely see that. I didn't like it but I guess I can appreciate that it was uniquely lacking in depth at the time of publishing.