Review of "The Emanuel 9

[Joyful17]

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of ""The Emanuel 9" by Richard Shine.]

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3 out of 4 stars

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In a world where hate, racism, and segregation abound, many have been relegated to a life of penury. Also, few opportunities to excel in life are made available to minority groups. The Emmanuel 9 by Richard Shine is a collection of poems centered on the author's personal experiences.

This book of 322 pages contains about 305 poems. Many of the poems focus on the author's feelings about America, life, morals, unity, segregation, poverty, spirituality, hatred, government, evil, violence, and so on. Each poem is a page long and often rhythmic. Many of the poems were easy to understand. Some of the titles of the poems are We Need Love, The Land I Love, Black Lives Matter, Shoot to Kill, I Dare to Care, Peace of Mind, Let Love Live, and so on. Each poem is 3 to 4 stanzas long.

I was caught in the author's world from the very first page. Little bits of his experiences while living in slums and a prejudiced society can be found in the poems. They bring the sad realities of our modern societies to mind.

The author has a unique way of sharing his thoughts with the creative use of wordplay. For instance, some part of the poem titled Racing to the Grave says, "The forest aint the nearest to the trees honey aint the sweetest to the beesthe sickest aint the nearest to be racing to the grave." I found the poem quite interesting and informative.

I love the diverse angle of each poem, despite the similarity of their themes. Also, the large number of poems in the book made it seem as if I was reading several books merged into one. For readers, this would be good value for money spent purchasing the book. Also, literary devices such as rhymes, consonance, wordplay, imagery, and many others made the poems interesting. This is my favorite aspect of the book.

Although I found many enjoyable and unique poems in the book, I observed that some of the poems struggled to be coherent. At other times, it seems that the use of rhymes led to a lack of appropriate choice of words for the poems. An example is the poem on page 58.

I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars due to the dislike above. However, there were many beautiful poems in this large collection. The poems encourage readers to be kind, humane, and considerate of others. The text was exceptionally well edited. Poetry lovers can learn much about life from this book.

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"The Emanuel 9
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[Nwankwo GC]

I'm really not a huge fan of poems, but your review draws me to this one. I'll definitely check out because I believe it will be worth every time I put into it. Great review. Well done

[Jen Nghishitende]

This sounds like a creative way to express such heavy topics. I would not usually ready a book of poems but this sounds like it will be well worth a read. Thanks for the thorough review.