Official Review: Life Expressed in 25 Words or Less
Posted: 06 Jul 2016, 16:58
[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Life Expressed in 25 Words or Less" by Jack Cantwell.]
4 out of 4 stars
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Despite the fact that I love poetry (my fiancée and I even met on a poetry website!), I'm always nervous about reviewing it. Poetry is such a personal thing and often has hidden meanings or even entirely different meanings depending on the reader. Even with all of that worry I couldn't pass up a collection of poetry that's all 25 words or less (with maybe one or two slip ups)! Self-imposed challenges are a fantastic method for channeling creativity, and it was very successful with the aptly-titled Life Expressed in 25 Words or Less by Jack Cantwell.
Jack calls his 25-word-or-less poems "word pictures," and it's a perfectly fitting name for them. While I couldn't get an accurate count due to my Kindle app crashing from my repeated page flipping, there are at least a good 100 of these word pictures within the book. They're broken into two chapters: one is inspired by his time in Japan where he lived for 5 years, while the other is worldwide and includes all sorts of things. These include news-worthy events, drinking a beer or watching a game, but they're all either surprisingly deep or just plain funny, striking a great balance and making it so much easier to read the whole collection without getting bogged down. In fact, many of the poems are almost more like tiny diary entries of things Jack experienced or saw, but they're often very poetic nonetheless.
I was rather confused at first, however, about the actual names of poems because of the format in which they're presented. The vast majority of the time the poems are presented as: poem, two lines of larger grey text, poem, big gap before the next set. It took a while to figure out that the two lines of grey text are linked to both poems - the top word or phrase goes with the poem preceding it and the bottom is linked to the following poem. Often the two words/phrases come together as one concept, which is really cool and unique!
Along with the great quantity of poems, there's also great quality. Out of the 100ish poems in the book, I'd written down around 20 that I thought were exceptional in their own ways. The rest weren't bad by any means, in fact I derived quite a bit of enjoyment out of nearly all of them, especially once I read the stories behind the poems at the end of the book.
Speaking of stories at the end of the book, Jack has written several explanations and back stories of what inspired many of the poems. Like the poems themselves, a great percentage of them were exceptional and the rest were enjoyable as well. Unfortunately, this leads into my only complaint about the book: the amount of "other stuff" vs poetry. While the back stories came across as enjoyable, they poetry is only about half of the 111 page book. While a casual reader can certainly skip them, and they're not terrible by any means, the foreword, introduction and message from the author take up nearly the first quarter of the book.
Despite the solitary flaw, the book is top-notch. I barely hesitated in giving it the 4 out of 4 stars it deserves, and at worst would give it a 3.8 if I could. It's a collection that even those who don't like poetry can (and should!) get into.
******
Life Expressed in 25 Words or Less
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
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4 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
Despite the fact that I love poetry (my fiancée and I even met on a poetry website!), I'm always nervous about reviewing it. Poetry is such a personal thing and often has hidden meanings or even entirely different meanings depending on the reader. Even with all of that worry I couldn't pass up a collection of poetry that's all 25 words or less (with maybe one or two slip ups)! Self-imposed challenges are a fantastic method for channeling creativity, and it was very successful with the aptly-titled Life Expressed in 25 Words or Less by Jack Cantwell.
Jack calls his 25-word-or-less poems "word pictures," and it's a perfectly fitting name for them. While I couldn't get an accurate count due to my Kindle app crashing from my repeated page flipping, there are at least a good 100 of these word pictures within the book. They're broken into two chapters: one is inspired by his time in Japan where he lived for 5 years, while the other is worldwide and includes all sorts of things. These include news-worthy events, drinking a beer or watching a game, but they're all either surprisingly deep or just plain funny, striking a great balance and making it so much easier to read the whole collection without getting bogged down. In fact, many of the poems are almost more like tiny diary entries of things Jack experienced or saw, but they're often very poetic nonetheless.
I was rather confused at first, however, about the actual names of poems because of the format in which they're presented. The vast majority of the time the poems are presented as: poem, two lines of larger grey text, poem, big gap before the next set. It took a while to figure out that the two lines of grey text are linked to both poems - the top word or phrase goes with the poem preceding it and the bottom is linked to the following poem. Often the two words/phrases come together as one concept, which is really cool and unique!
Along with the great quantity of poems, there's also great quality. Out of the 100ish poems in the book, I'd written down around 20 that I thought were exceptional in their own ways. The rest weren't bad by any means, in fact I derived quite a bit of enjoyment out of nearly all of them, especially once I read the stories behind the poems at the end of the book.
Speaking of stories at the end of the book, Jack has written several explanations and back stories of what inspired many of the poems. Like the poems themselves, a great percentage of them were exceptional and the rest were enjoyable as well. Unfortunately, this leads into my only complaint about the book: the amount of "other stuff" vs poetry. While the back stories came across as enjoyable, they poetry is only about half of the 111 page book. While a casual reader can certainly skip them, and they're not terrible by any means, the foreword, introduction and message from the author take up nearly the first quarter of the book.
Despite the solitary flaw, the book is top-notch. I barely hesitated in giving it the 4 out of 4 stars it deserves, and at worst would give it a 3.8 if I could. It's a collection that even those who don't like poetry can (and should!) get into.
******
Life Expressed in 25 Words or Less
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Like CataclysmicKnight's review? Post a comment saying so!