Please Listen

by Sarah Kabli

Please Listen is a debut collection of prose poetry exploring topics ranging from depression and disappointment to love and facing fears. Whether about drowning or drinking coffee, there is the desperation of a voice that just wants to be heard running through all the poems. Uplifting at times, these confessional pieces touch upon the feelings of losing touch with yourself and the people around you while dealing with the ever present conflict between the desire to give up and the will to hold on.

Genres: Poetry

81 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 17, 2013

Reviews

[Joshua Hair · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poetry offered in this (unfortunately) short collection is brilliant and beautiful. I'm so thankful to have won a copy from Goodreads, because otherwise I most likely never would have heard of Ms. Kabli and therefore would have missed out on an incredible debut.

Although most of the poems are between a page to two pages, each holds a great deal of emotional impact. There were times in which I cheered the author for her in-your-face attitude towards those who have wronged her in the past and other moments where I connected with her on a completely different level and just wanted to reach out and hold her.

As a poet myself, I found her prose to be interesting but certainly not lacking and enjoyed the collection as a whole immensely. In fact, I picked it up intending to read the first few poems and ended up finishing the last before I set it back down.

I truly hope that Sarah Kabli will continue to write these amazing pieces for publishing in the future and I end by thanking her for showing me a view of the world that I very well may have missed otherwise.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boy, does this girl know how to turn a phrase: she can flip it on its head, create a metaphor that you absolutely did not see coming, and really make her writing work.

My favorite pieces from this collection all come from the middle: "Simon Says," "Our Story," and my favorite, "Coffee Stains and Paper Hearts." The imagery and the dizzying phrase-turning were what I found to be the strongest aspects of this collection. Emotional in an almost mythical manner, there were parts of this collection that were downright magical.

However, I often found the tone to be overly melodramatic, and this alienated me from a good number of the poems. I found myself thinking, "Surely it can't be this bad," "Who would actually love this person?", etc. The poems that talked about misery in such blatant terms reminded me of some of my high school students' first attempts at poetry: when a writer first realized what power words could have, sometimes he/she would let things run away, and then he/she was not controlling the writing anymore. It's easy to get so caught up in an emotion that it takes over the page a little too much in the effort to make a point; the writing can become too overt and heavy-handed.

All in all? Worth reading for the stronger pieces.

Note: I received a free copy of this book through Goodreads's First Reads program.

[Christy · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the first to the very last page I was in aww of the words written on each page. I felt her words as if they were my own! Thank you so much for sharing this book with me!

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I may be bias, seeing as she is my sister, but I loved the book. The poems were incredibly relatable and who doesn't like a book they can relate to and see themselves in??