Some time ago I bought Beyond Words, a book of poetry by internet friend, Poppy White-Herrin. After the purchase, I let the book sit a couple of months before digging in. Then, I read the book slowly, one or two poems at a time.

In fifty-seven poems, Poppy tells us a story. Oh, the poems aren’t necessarily “linked” into a story, but I sense they are linked nevertheless. You’ll find quite a bit of angst in this book, angst over a relationship that has gone bad.

Or, maybe, it’s about a relationship developed then shattered. In the poem “Fantasies of True Love”, coming early in the book, Poppy closes the poem with this stanza:

Dreams of you like stars glistening in the night,
dangling among the darkness overcasting.
Soar through the clouds unto heaven
where true love is everlasting.

In these excellent lines, I sense hope. Maybe it’s not a current relationship, but rather the dream of one.

Two poems later, in “I Am To You”, we sense the relationship may be going bad in these lines:

you cannot abandon me
to wither in sunlight
for I am your need
to receive bounty.

Not much further in the book, in “Love in the Winds of Rapture”, we are still seeing hope:

Now I know your faults, yet I am still beguiled.
I see the flare of love in your reflection by the light of my own,
it leaps to high winds of rapture, making its presence known

Alas, right after this poem, the next two, “Lukewarm” and “Release” turn the story around. The first gives us this:

We walk between youth’s fire
and the bitter cold of old age,
embrace what seems like defeat.

and the second gives us this:

Let me go,
please…

I don’t want to fly away,
I simply need to breathe.

I love those last two lines, which say much in so few words, giving the reader lots to think about. And we’re only 15 pages into a 57 page book at this point.

Did the poet mean to tell a story? Did she mean to give the progression from starry-eyed love to “embrace what seems like defeat”? Was it all planned out for maximum effect on the reader?

Or, did this all happen by accident, the poet choosing poems from her larger collection, poems intended to gain an editor’s notice and lead to publication, with the story being unintentional? I would never ask the poet this question. Better to let me, the reader, ponder what the poet wrote, what voice her narrator uses, and let the poems speak to me as they do. Who knows: maybe the next time I read this book the poems will speak an entirely different message to me.

With all my reviews, I always askif the book is a keeper, and will I ever read it again? Yes to both questions. I have a shelf of books of poetry in the downstairs library annex (a.k.a. the storeroom). I keep them there because no one but me will likely be interested in them. Poppy’s will be on the shelf, along with Frost, Wordsworth, Thomas, and many others. Perhaps I’ll pull this out again in five or ten years, and again enjoy these poems in a variety of forms, along with some excellent free verse.

Who knows the message it will say then?