I used to hate poetry; I despised the interruption of flow with line breaks, I detested the unnecessary rhyming, and most of all, I loathed the language that seemed so foreign to me. Everytime I picked up any poems by Shakespeare, I struggled to focus while reading for more than five minutes. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll still never catch me reading Shakespeare’s poetry for the joy of it, but at least now, I’ve found some poetry that speaks to my soul. The first poetry book I genuinely loved, between you & these bones, caused me to completely question my entire hatred for the genre of writing. Filled with intimate stories about life and death—and about moments that seem so insignificant—between you & these bones highlights the beauty of the ordinary. Not all great writing requires a deep story. In fact, I’ve come to realize that some of the best pieces I’ve ever read revolved around the most common of events. An old man humming a tune on the bus home, a cartoon of milk sitting on a shelf, a photo of cereal laying by the lawn—all of these moments make up F.D Soul’s intricately written anthology. I’ve never cried and laughed so hard at just one book. Beauty can appear within anything; sometimes, we just have to look from the perspectives of others.
