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Despite what Instagram would have you believe, your angsty Facebook status updates when you were 17 don't make for poetry. Nor do, as illustrated in one of these pallid word collections, shower thoughts. I mean, to be fair, shower thoughts can lead to unique, fleshed-out, interesting poems that the writer can put effort into, sure! But that's not what was done here. If any actual work was put in anywhere in this book, I can't find it. Sure, poetry is subjective -- but there are limits. This reeks of laziness. Spewing up random thoughts on a page, maybe adding a quirky pen illustration, calling it a poem, and then expecting people to swallow it isn't a poetry. It's certainly not any kind of art. Sorry not sorry, Instapoets.

A type of business skill, perhaps, and maybe even a laudable one. But it isn't art, though. And it's not effort.

If Gabbie Hanna is indeed "a brilliant new voice with a magical ability", then Rupi Kaur should be the next poet laureate.

I'm stunned. I've actually found a book more scattered and error-laden than [b:Mermaid Magic: Connecting with the Energy of the Ocean and the Healing Power of Water|11517938|Mermaid Magic Connecting with the Energy of the Ocean and the Healing Power of Water|Serene Conneeley|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347361382s/11517938.jpg|16454566]. I never thought it would happen.

This book is an utter disaster, and I say that with disappointment. I went into this positively, looking forward to reading it. I love faerie mythology and lore, and credit where credit's due: it's a really beautifully designed book! Too bad it's filled with bad research and fluffy made-up nonsense.

My doubts began when the author claimed that "some sources" (never named) claimed that air faeries or "sylphs" clean up chemtrails from the air. Yes, you read that right. Chemtrails. (Also, while we're here, sylphs are elemental spirits, originating from Paracelsus -- not faeries.)

So. I mean. Well. YEAH.

My doubts solidified into annoyance when I reached "[p]erhaps you've heard of the Irish selkies..." Long exhale. Firstly, selkies aren't Irish -- they're Scottish. I kind of wonder if author understands that Irish myth and Scottish myth aren't interchangable, and that they're actual separate cultures. The very word "selkie" is Scots, for crying out loud! Secondly? It takes about three seconds to Google this. To my utter frustration, the author kept referring to selkies as Irish for the remainder of the book.

Next up, I was told that "Japanese mths speak of a shapeshifting fox called a kitsune", and I just facepalmed. No. 'Kitsune' is merely the Japanese word for fox. There is no special word for shapeshifting foxes, because ALL foxes were believed to have that ability. They were considered a witch animal, essentially.

Again, this is Google-able info.

But oh, it went on and on. Did you know that the Moirae/Fates of Greek myth are faeries? And the Seven Hathors of late Ancient Egyptian myth! (No. No, they are not -- they're goddesses.)

Some more Celtic Culture Smushing, for good measure, a claim that Picts lived in Ireland as well as Scotland (they didn't; you're thinking of Gaels), and that Picts and pixies are related (no, they're not -- the linguistic link between "Pict" and "pixie" is shakier than a bellydancer on the San Andreas fault after an espresso shot). Oh, and did you know pixies help with housework? (No, they don't, unless you live in Dartmoor. You're thinking of brownies, which are, I might add, Scottish. Which is not Irish. Just, y'know. FYI.)

And on and on! Kelpies are "enchanted horses". Pooka are goblins. Disney's "The Princess and the Frog" came out in 1992. (How...how did that slip by the editor? ...was there an editor?)

Then the conflicting information about faeries (author never specifies which type) themselves. They'll help grant your wishes, but they don't understand human emotions. You can make them like you but they actually frickin' HATE humans to no end (yeah, all of them. Not just the Unseelie lot, ALL of them!).

When the author claimed that "modern" faeries enjoy eating "fairy bread', I actually started laughing from embarrassment and knew I had to DNF things or my head would explode. (For those who don't know: "fairy bread" is an Australian dessert served, largely, at children's birthday parties. So, tell me, does anyone know how the aos-sìth feel about Wizz Fizz?)

This is book is beyond awful. It's ill-researched garbage and I wasn't going to put myself through the rest of it if the first part was such disorganised false information that a five minute Google search could rectify. I'd give it zero stars if I could. Bloody hell.

True rating 1.5/5. I wanted to like this. I really, really did. It's silly, but I feel bad for not liking it. Writing about trauma is just about one of the bravest, hardest things you can do as a poet, and at the same time, the most cathartic. So I wanted to fall in love with these poems.

But...this is peak Instapoetry, and not in the good way.

Don't get me wrong; I don't think Instapoetry is "not poetry". Some of it can grab you by the mind and splinter your heart into pieces with only a few lines. There are people who write in this...genre? movement?...who just nail it, you know? But Lovelace isn't one of them. I think she has the potential to be one of them, eventually (especially after finishing her second book, [b:The Witch Doesn't Burn in This One|35924698|The Witch Doesn't Burn in This One (Women Are Some Kind of Magic, #2)|Amanda Lovelace|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1502335293s/35924698.jpg|55649562] first); there were a few poems and lines where I would think "ooh, YES!", but they were few and far between.

Mostly this was just sentences of heavy-handed angst with many, many line breaks. Given the subject matter, you'd expect these poems to be gut-punchers, but the majority of them didn't really make me feel anything out of the ordinary, except empathy for a fellow survivor. That alone doesn't make a poem good. If some of them had been combined, perhaps, and presented more as prose, then I think it might have hit that target. But nope, line breaks and disjointed thoughts out the wazoo. (I actually found the constant line-breaking literally -- first meaning, not second -- headache-inducing to read, and I don't usually get headaches from reading.)

The final part of the book, "you", was an exercise in second-hand embarrassment for me. I felt like I was reading a handful of Tumblr posts, not poetry. (Cue the arguments about how "anything is poetry"; maybe so, but...doesn't that mean that nothing is poetry, then, as well?) I didn't really object to any of the ideas put forth in the poems, because you'd have to be a certain type of creep to, y'know, actively object to encouraging self-love or self-worth. It's that they were all presented so unoriginally. None of them were presented in ways I hadn't seen or read before, there were no new metaphors or wordplay or anything. It was just regurgitated Tumblr platitudes, basically.

Despite this, I think Lovelace has the ability to grow as a poet, because she displays two important things: a willingness to tackle the tough stuff, and a very obvious passion for her writing -- I think she's going to find her own groove and grow into it. That gives me hope for her later works, and I honestly am looking forward to what she produces in the future. It's been a while since I've given a book such a low rating and still wanted to read more from the author.

I've read dribs and drabs of Leav's poetry on Tumblr and other such online morasses, and witnessed some of her insecure (if not plain old toxic) behaviour towards people not praising her work to the sky, but still I picked this up. It was the internet picking on the worst stuff, right? It couldn't all be as bad as it seemed?

I was surprised! It wasn't! It was WORSE.

I'm kind of stunned that this puerile, largely cheesy dross got published, and not only that, that it was described as "evocative", and that Leav has an "an unnerving ability to see inside the hearts and minds of her readers". I'm still not wholly sure this isn't some gigantic elaborate prank perpetuated by her publishers.

Who are these mysterious readers, just by the by? Because the only people I know who have this sort of juvenile and entitled outlook towards love and heartbreak are pre-teens, and I'm not precisely sure this is her target demographic. The immaturity of the way Leav attacks her subject made me wonder, a little guiltily, if I was being overly harsh towards a very young poet...and nope. Leav was 29 years old when she first published this. I'm kind of gobsmacked, to be honest.

(As I remarked to a fellow writer, if this sort of thing can get you published, then I'm going on a quest to find all the disastrous stuff I wrote when I was eleven, and will compile a bestseller of my own.)

Listen, I'm not against simplicity in poetry; simplicity can be a beautiful weapon when wielded skillfully -- look at Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" for the quintessential example of this -- but this isn't skillful; it's clumsy, childlike, and it's about as evocative as something on a Hallmark greeting card.

And sure, it's popular and it's made Lang Leav one of the darlings of the Instapoetry set. But that doesn't make it remotely good. If you've never read poetry before, don't cut your teeth on this garbage. Pick up [b:The Anatomy of Being|17729031|The Anatomy of Being|Shinji Moon|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1365016469s/17729031.jpg|24800666] by Shinji Moon instead, which is actually evocative and truly heart-rending.