Review: Bloom

Bloom by Beau Taplin
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Bloom by Beau Taplin is another one of those collections that's trying to bank off of the trend in contemporary poetry. Unfortunately, this one does not meet the standards of some of the other collections that have come out in the past two years.

Bloom has three distinct types of work within the collection: the I poems, the You poems, and the full-page sentences that are reminiscent of a magazine pull quote. The first type of poems, the I poems, are ones that the poet addresses from the first person perspective. Most of these seem like love notes, but not ones that are any more complicated than the notes everyone passed in middle school. There's really no urgency or connection that speaks to the love being more than an infatuation inspired by boredom.

The second poems, the You poems, are a bit patronizing to the reader. These poems tell you how you should live your life and how to feel. Also, these poems will quickly remind most readers of those long quote memes posted all over the internet--the ones that people post to be inspiring, but end up really saying nothing.

The full-page quotes are like those Safe Auto commercials, the ones where the voiceover goes "This is a bad quote." They don't make much sense and are written in a very hard-to-read font.

What does this collection have going for it? A very beautiful layout and design. If I hadn't already explored what's inside, I would have picked this up for the design alone. It is going to look amazing as a paperback, but reading it as an ebook is difficult on the eyes when it switches from black to white pages. Overall, it's not what I'm looking for in poetry, but I'm sure that there are some out there that enjoy it.

*Book provided by NetGalley

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