Bending the Universe: A Collection of Original Poems

by Justin Wetch, Malachi Paulsen (Illustrations)

The Internationally Bestselling poetry book Bending The Universe is a collection of 100 original poems written by Alaskan artist Justin Wetch in five sections-- Society, Love, Life, Personal, and Nature. They encompass all aspects of life from a carefully considered, if pessimistic, perspective. Featuring incredible illustrations by Malachi Paulsen.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

178 pages, Paperback

Published December 8, 2016

Reviews

[Dianna ☾midnight reads☽ · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/5 stars

"We post our best selves on social media
But want to be loved for who we are
We delete our worst moments
But want the future to read our memoirs"

Bending the Universe is a collection of poetry divided into five sections: Society, Love, Life, Personal, and Nature.

Reading this book feels like someone ranting to you about everything they did not like in the world and he won't stop because he likes hearing himself talk. Really. The poems here are supposedly brutally honest and beautiful, and while some of them are really good like Diversity and The Fire's Still Burning, most of the pieces just sound like someone whining about how he does not like how his life goes.

While I do appreciate his first poems about society and politics for they are well written and truly resonates with current events, his overall tone sounds like a self-righteous prick who thinks he knows everything about every single thing. Also how he mentions mental illnesses like it's another annoyance on his list to rant about and not a naturally occurring thing just irks me up.

Some of his poems I liked are Sadistic Fiction, Paraphernalia, The Fire's Still Burning, Diversity, High on Your Perfume, Love & Logic, Empty Wealth, and Dust on the Piano. Also, the sketches here done by Malachi Paulsen are beautiful but I can't find the connection of the drawings with the poems inside. They seem random and just put there for the sake of having drawings inside.

I guess his overall pessimistic tone greatly affected my enjoyment of the poems. They are written well but the feeling they gave me after reading them bothered me.

➷ARC provided by Netgalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing in exchange for an honest review➹

[Hirdesh · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 poetic stars.
Review to come.

Thanks for Netgalley and respective publisher for sending me this copy.

Wonderful poetry wrinkled into Extravagant poetic phrase with deeper perception.
Such poetry can melt any rock, Glittering of spectacular simple words knitted very expertly with visionary aspects.

"Ancestors fought for freedom,
but these kids ain't free,
Decades of debt for a
piece of paper that says degree."

"Oh, but that's the way it goes
Growing up means growing old
We change seasons change
Leaves turns to gold."

"Global warming is cooking us
but we don't care
We didn't start the fire
but it's our fault it's still here."

"Saying we truly know someone
Is like claiming to be able
To recite a book by memory
Having only seen the cover. "


"Growing up in a world we didn't ask for
Growing up with a low ceiling and no floor
Growing up when dreaming means declaring war
Maybe if we don't grow up we can learn to live more. "


"As artists, we create the beauty
We are too afraid to live out
And search, but always fall just shy
Of finding what life is about."


....
"Fear of our differences drive us to action,
We could have peace, but choose overreaction.
Our differences are as minor as Pepsi versus Coke,
But they get stronger over time like a piece of oak.
......

Ignorance is a cancer slowly killing our conscience
Eating away at fading chances of gaining tolerance.
I envision a utopia where people are free;
Where nobody is judged based on beliefs or creed."

[Necalli Calavera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow wow wow!!!!

What a fabulous book! All that Justin wrote was just amazing imagery and connections to today's society.
Please if you have the time, sit down and read this for yourself. This is a book that really makes you think. ✨

[Novels_seeker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actually I was aspecting more from this poetry collection, but I still liked some parts of it.

[F · Rating 3 out of 5]

This author of this book came across as such a self righteous little prick, so much so, that his tone and attitude towards certain subjects ruined most of his own work, which is a shame because this could have been really something.

The poetry style is pretty basic, here and there are some little changes in style, but it was overall pretty kindergarten like. I do love his poems about his country, those are the harsh and bitter truth that a lot of people refuse to either see or just don't notice.

However though the poems about women were probably meant to come across as feminist-like but to me they were quite stereotypical. 'Anorexia, wearing black, slit wrists.' Typical. Very unappealing they were. The author just portrays as as quite shallow while I'm sure that wasn't his intention.

This book would have been better if the poetry/writing style had been different and the attitude towards mental illnesses.

[Hafsa | حفصہ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disclaimer: Received a free digital copy of the book through Netgalley.

2.5 stars

This collection is divided in five sections: "Society", "Love", "Life", "Personal" and "Nature". Initially, I thought that this collection had a pretty average start with poems which could be understood by anyone, however, as it progressed the sections got weaker. Society in general was average yet strongest amongst the five portions of the book for me. Although, some of the pieces in "Society" were my favourites and I loved them, at times, I felt that it dealt with very first-world issues rather than the whole world and I couldn't relate as much as I wanted to. Moreover, even though I could completely connect with "are all the great stories already lived out?" perspective, the constant gloomy picture of our society which is so very true was rehashed so many times with different words that it made the whole thing repetitive and like made me want to go 'oh get over it, it's the way the world works now' which is so unlike my attitude towards poetry. I could also see some pieces in all the portions working better as spoken word poetry rather than written.

My main problem with this collection was I easily could have made all the poems in the collection my favourite but there were just parts in them which I loved as opposed to their entirety which was just plain disappointing, e.g. the second halves of some two-paged poems were really good but I still couldn't call them my favourite because their first halves were weak. Some poems with creative themes/topics could've been just better worded in my opinion as well. Wetch also sometimes used mindless rhymes and failed to elegantly transition between two far-fetched themes/things within poems which further weakened them; some experiments just didn't go in the right direction for this collection.

As aforementioned, there are five sections in this collection and after the first one, "Society", the collection kind of went downhill. "Love" as a section wasn't strong, like there were average poems and then really poor ones and some were well-written but didn't induce the feelings that they should have. Some pieces in "Life" and "Personal" in particular could very well have been simple prose rather than poetry if it weren't for the spaces between the lines and that bugged me. I think this collection could've done without the "Personal" portion even though I know that the respective portion must have taken much more introspection than all other portions combined. The last portion, "Nature", was my second favourite; I felt that Wetch was able to communicate about the atmosphere and its intricacies saliently and as indicated by the pictures at the end of the book, the immersing yourself in the surrounding of what you're writing about method did work!

Overall, if I do a quantitative measurement of how much I liked this book, only 27 out of 120 poems managed to be my favourite which is quite disappointing and is indicated by my rating. However, I do feel like as a young poet Wetch has the potential do write much better and hopefully he won't fail to impress in his future collections!

[Ana · Rating 1 out of 5]

'Netgalley ARC provided by The Publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review'

I was trying to get more poetry into this reading year. I was quite eager to do it and the good people at NetGalley were kind enough to help me along. But, in all honesty, this was a mistake.

I feel like this book is basically shouting in my face what I am supposed to believe in. Which is weird considering I agree with a lot of points made in here. It felt like a dry rant, a self-righteous, egocentric millennial preaching to the choir. For me, it lacked depth, true relevance and feeling. I am not passing any judgments on Mr. Wetch himself, it is not like I know him, I am just saying that is what it felt like reading his words. Yet, I am curious to check out future works, I do believe there is room for improvement here, perhaps through allowing the writing to become more spontaneous and less cerebral.
This might not be the kindest of reviews, but it is an honest review. And I think that is fair enough.

[Chanel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this as an ARC on NetGalley.

The author clearly put time and effort into these pieces. They are unique pieces that feel personal and relevant to the author's life. There were a few pieces that I really enjoyed (specifically "Forever" and parts of "Lithium") that I would like to share with others; they hit me personally. I appreciated these aspects of this collection.

However, a large and overwhelming majority of the pieces in this collection had very pessimistic themes which I didn't really like. Also, there were times when the rhymes and patterns felt forced rather than organic.

As a debut collection (I believe) from a young author, those aspects comes across very clearly to me.

Overall, just okay, but much better than some other poetry collections I've read in the last year.

[Janette Mcmahon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to admit I am usually not a poetry person, but this collection spoke to me. The truth behind his words and the thoughts that he shared seemed like he was speaking straight to me. The poetry was.combined with beautiful drawings that enhanced each collection. Highly recommend.

[Romina · Rating 3 out of 5]

خب، با خوندن این کتاب به این نتیجه رسیدم که Poetry میتونه ژانری باشه که دوستش دارم...
هرچند این کتابم فوق‌العاده نبود و مخصوصا دوتا سکشن آخرش رو خیلی دوست نداشتم ولی یه سری از شعراش خیلی قشنگ بود و لذت بردم.
قصد دارم از این بعد در کنار کتابایی که میخونم سعی کنم کتابای شعرم بخونم تا بیشتر با این ژانر آشنا شم.
از اونجایی که حرف زیادی نمیتونم درباره‌ش بزنم، شعر مورد علاقمو مینویسم!

MIDNIGHT
Midnight is the cruelest of hours, breeding
Dark thoughts out of the blackness, freeing
Despair from the prison of happiness, meeting
Anxiety and fear in a treacherous alley, waiting
To bring a murderous end to hope before morning.
Fate is the cruelest of masters, taking
Life when it pleases or at random, handing
Rigged decks to whom it pleases, cheating
All alike and none the wiser, taking
Everything away from those with nothing.
Hope is a foolish disaster, ending
All realism and rationality, lying
Always promising too much, trying
To blunt the painfulness of life, muting
Dark thoughts and catalysts for weeping.
Sadness is the cruelest of emotions, crying
Deep sobs into the canyons of the mind, singing
Broken songs of torment and death, sending
Echoes at random into the future, requiring
All happiness to be punctuated with mourning.
Time is the cruelest of physicians, healing
All wounds, but always slowly, looping
A surgical needle through the mind’s flesh, experiencing
Torment again over again, repeating
Until anesthetics bring an end to feeling.

[Fanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I genuinely liked this! I don't often read poetry but these poems centered around realistic, common and current scenarios was a good enough reason for me to keep reading them. The collection is divided into five sections, five essential topics that basically sums up everyone--society, love, life, personal and nature. The first section opened with a bang and I couldn't help but smile at how relatable some stanzas were; the commonly seen and felt instances were well-constructed in a manner that didn't come across too harshly but the point was made evident. The other sections were good too, but a few poems in each part seemed a bit rushed and not particularly overwhelming, something I expect from poetry. While this erratic selection worked greatly in a few bits, they did tone down the excitement in a few.

Regardless, I would certainly recommend this to those who love their poems transpired from real-life experiences, thoughts and circumstances, giving the readers a transparent vision.

Disclaimer: I received a digital copy of this book via Netgalley but that in no way influences my rating or opinions about it. Thank you Andrews McMeel Publishing and Justin Wetch!

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[Addy the Book Bat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bending the Universe is a collection of poetry by Justin A. Wetch that touches five different topics such as Society, Love, Life, Personal, and Nature. Each poem in each section touches various topics within that specific theme. The poems are relatively straightforward with a hint of floral elements (if that makes sense).
A few of the poems can rhyme but it's not used throughout the entire collection (which can throw someone off). Besides being straightforward, the poems are also very thought provoking, especially in the first section (Society).
To finish off, some of these poems seemed rather personal in the good sense that it feels as if it was tailored for the reader, which is something I really enjoy. Overall, I did really enjoy this and I have already started recommending it to close friends.

[Caitlin Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this collection of poems, it was pretty good. The first two sections "society" and "love" stood out to me more than the final 3. I enjoyed "life" and "personal", but didn't get much from the "nature" section. The illustrations separating each section were awesome!

[Cass ☾ · Rating 5 out of 5]

i didn't enjoy the last section nearly as much as the first 4 but i'm still giving it 5 stars because this book is absolutely amazing

[Susanna Gervasoni · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 ⭐️

This collection gives me Tumblr 2015. It’s not bad, it’s just very simplistic and a bit corny. Not all of them, some are good. It just didn’t give me lot of emotions.

[Caitlin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received an eARC from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Review originally published on my blog, Turning Pages.

I’ve been very into poetry right now, and with the interesting description and stunning cover, I was drew to this one. However, while the collection seemed to start strong, I found the collection difficult to finish reading.

First of all, I did quite enjoy that the poems aren’t the typical short jarring stanzas we so often see in contemporary free form poetry. Not only that, but most of the poems actually rhyme and I found that made the poems have a really nice flow. It’s easier for me to slip into poems that have some type of rhyme scheme, because the words are lyrical. I also liked many of the topics Wetch covered, especially those about nature and about the expectations society places on us to achieve certain life ‘goals’: college, steady job, marriage, etc. whether it truly makes us happy or not. The very first poem, “Diversity” is one of the best in the collection.

However, where the collection started to lose me was with the poems that criticized millennials. Now, I’m a millennial (and so is the author). While it’s true each generation has its weaknesses, I felt that Wetch romanticized the past to the point of being blind to the strengths of our generation. He seems to believe that millennials don’t care about anything, not culture, politics, or love. That is completely untrue. A lot of millennials travel, go to museums, keep up with world events and politics, and we are definitely accepting of love (love is love). I feel like he often shortchanges the generation. In a later poem, he does admit each generation has its issues, but that only comes after multiple poems which criticize millennials. To include multiple poems like this is to alienate a huge audience. Indeed, many of the poems seem to express a jaded and pessimistic view in general, not just about his generation.

There’s also a poem called “Femme”, which is meant to be feminist and address the sexism women face. One lines says that a woman applies makeup because society says she needs it in order to be considered beautiful. While I do see the partial truth in this, makeup is a much more complex topic. It cannot be boiled down to this. What about the women who enjoy wearing makeup? What about the women who wear makeup not only because they like it, but because they find it fun, because it's a way to express themselves, because some even consider it a form of art? I understand what Wetch was trying to do, saying that society has these standards for women that are set by one 'ideal’ body type, copious photoshop, and impossible expectations. That women are often valued based on how 'traditionally attractive’ they are considered. My issue lately with men writing about sexism is that they don’t understand the complexities of each topic in relation to sexism. And to me, that makes such poems problematic.

Bending The Universe is a decent poetry collection, which starts strong and has good themes. However, most of the poems didn’t speak to me, or I found off-putting or over-simplified. The section on nature, in which nature is personified, was a good ending. I love reading about nature personified. But that wasn’t enough to save the collection for me.

[Mallory Pierce]

I just recently got done reading the book Bending the Universe. It is a book that is composed of 100 different poems. These poems are separated into five different sections. These sections are society, love, life, personal, and nature. In each section the poems are obviously focused on that specific topic. In the section of society the poems talk about how social media has a great influence on the generation at hand. The love section talks about break ups and the heart ache from relationships. The third section is about life, this section was somewhat broad. The life section talks about how we overall live our lives the same. We all go through schooling, get a job, most start a family, grow old and retire. We have all lived our life in the mold that has been set out for us and are scared to do different. The fourth section is personal. Here the author talks about the soul and the inner feelings of a person. The last section is nature and it talks about the seasons and landscapes. It also talks about the seas, oceans and life forms. My favorite part of the book were the sections about nature and love. I felt that, that section was very relatable and that others could connect well. I would definitely recommend this book to someone who is interested in reading different forms of poems. The book is very realistic and allows for the reader to make connections with their personal life.

[Manon「マノン」 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bending the universe is a poetry collection divided into five sections untitled society, love, life, personal and nature.

In society, Justin Wetch is basically pointing out the problems we are facing nowadays in our society such as racism, inequality, how women are portrayed in conventional media but also on social media. He also dives into politics which I normally don’t really like to read about, but I guess the format did help me appreciated. My favorite one was definitely “Welcome to America” which draw a pretty grim portray of the USA.

The poems of the love and life section were a little cliche, especially the love poems, the theme and images are overused but I’m starting to think that at that point, all love poems are cliche and nothing is really new.

Overall, I really liked the poems about society but the rest was just flat for me and nothing grip my attention.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another poetry book now crossed off of my list. Bending the Universe is a poetry book with 5 sections in the book and 100 poems in total. The sections include Society, Love, Life, Personal and Nature. In each section there was at least to poems that I thought were interesting or had the possibility to be my new favorite. I plan on re-reading this book again sometime, and I’ll probably end up annotating certain poems to get a clearer understanding of the poem. Overall I thought that this book was interesting and thought provoking. There were a few poems that I was confused as to what was going on which is why I plan on annotating them when I eventually reread this book again.

[Ana · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is a hard thing to judge someone’s raw emotions, but i have to say that there were some extremely powerful poems and some that I though could have ended sooner

[lexi ✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

there were definitely some really good poems in here, especially in the beginning where a lot of the poetry related to ongoing issues in the present

[Cristian · Rating 3 out of 5]

The collection was broken into 5 parts: Society, Love, Life, Personal, and Nature.

Society spoke on current issues we face. Touching on police brutality, racism, socialism, privacy, etc. I got mixed feelings on where the author lies on these issues. An example from, “The Fire’s Still Burning”.

The country’s gone gay and half of ‘em aint happy
Floods in Texas, drought in Silicon Valley
We didn’t start the fire but it still burns the youth
Confederate flag’s now a symbol of hate groups
Young kids in basements proclaiming they’re savages
Police brutality has become the accepted average
Greece is bankrupt, China has all the money
America’s just one giant entertainment junkie
Indoctrination, not education, never read between the lines
The future’s a dead end and we didn’t see the signs

I wasn’t sure if the author was stating that these topics were never an issue or if they’ve always been there and are now predominate. With “Confederate flag’s now a symbol of hate groups”, is he saying that it’s the youth fault its viewed like this now - because he disagrees?

Love was based around new relationships, the experiences within relationships, unrequited love, and break ups. Nothing really stood out, but if I read an author compare someone’s eyes to something astronomical like stars, galaxies, sun, moon, or even a forest, again, I’m just going to put the book down and quit reading it. I did like one excerpt from, “The Cosmic Soul” because we often make assumptions about a person based on their looks or become fixated on their flaws, forgetting who they really are on the inside.

Oh, she has a beautiful smile,
And so she is only seen
As a two-dimensional image
Like a tabloid cover model;
But her third dimension
Remains in the dark;
No one asks of her soul
As if she could exist
As pretty skin
Covering nothing.

Life was about the pressures we feel from society, how cell phones consume our attention and time, how we stay up late thinking about trivial things. In “Clearing the Scoreboard”, the theme was that we make ourselves miserable by tallying moments in our lives when people wronged us and we need not focus on those events and learn to let go and make peace with it. I felt “Discovering Mental Injuries” is what made this entire collection pessimistic and provided a new perspective for me.

“Have you ever looked at your hands
And found a mysterious cut or bruise?
You don't remember getting it
But the evidence is clearly there.
Maybe you discover it
When using hand sanitizer;
It stings, and hurts sharply,
Stealing space in your consciousness.
I've been wondering lately
If the same thing exists for the mind.
Maybe you're just sitting in your room
Sketching absentmindedly,
Or just sitting there, quietly
Thinking about life's happenings
And you stumble upon an injury
You didn't know you had.
Something someone said
That you pretended didn't hurt
Or something you wanted to say
But didn't have the courage to
Anything gnawing at your mind
Creating a cystic scar;
Perhaps the sound of a certain voice
Is what calls it to your attention.
Discovering mental injuries
I begin to wonder cautiously
What if they're infected?
What if this is a slow death?
Maybe awareness is all we have
And true treatment is impossible...
I guess I'll just bring a band aid
And hope these mental injuries heal.

I didn’t care for Personal. The author lost me here, but there was a really corny line that stood out -
“Emotion, like sushi, is best served raw.” Haha

Nature wasn’t so much about being out in the wilderness. They were simple observations like comparing the sunrise to a warm cup of coffee or raindrops to love letters. They were okay, nothing to promote.

Some of the poems had rhythm in a way that it seemed like spoken word, which put me off because it didn’t flow with the rest of the work. I feel like the author's poetry has potential to mature. He tries a little too hard, and the poems on the "Personal" section really illustrated him on his high horse. To close, here's another pessimistic piece I enjoyed.

“We are each on our own quests
To find meaning in our lives
But the meaning we seek
Is only a reflection
Of everything we have lost before.”

[Joseph Spuckler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bending the Universe by Justin Anthony Wetch is the commercial reprinting of his first collection of poetry. Wetch is an artist, poet, photographer, musician, pretentious egomaniac, and messy-haired fool from Palmer, Alaska.

This collection covers several themes and the themes are laid out in a way that benefits the book overall. The first section, "Society," is very hard hitting. The faults and failures of modern America are described in detail. The pace is fast and jumps from point to point. Once realizing the Wetch is a musician so I took to reading his work more as urban lyrics. This seemed to work well as there is no real line structure and what meter there is seems to be more like hip-hop. “Church” is one of the best in that part of the collection and shows promise as poetry. The topics are current and reflect the thinking of many.

The section “Love” fell flat with me except for the opening poem “Your song on the Radio.” Perhaps, it was nostalgia calling me. The other poems seemed a bit trite and overplayed. The third section, "Life," is a bit strong than “Love” but lacks the power of "Society". There still seems to be the essence of the current trend of writing platitudes and four or five line poems:

It is such a pity how some people
Are dead long before their hearts stop beating.
This old man died at twenty-five
When life told him to stop dreaming

To Wetch’s credit, his poems are much longer and more thought out than the new current trend of writers. He seems to be trying to bridge the gap between lyricist and poet. “Empty Wealth” sounds like it could have been an 80s metal song:

Matching Rolex watches
Not happy after all
Bought a huge new mansion
With gold-plated walls.

A garage full of Lamborghinis
Can’t fill an empty heart
Sometimes even the rich
Wish for a fresh start.

I don’t think that is too far from a from Def Leppard or Quiet Riot. I like it. It’s really good as an 80s rock lyric.

The final two sections “Personal” and “Nature” allows the poet to finish stronger than expected. Personally, this is a hit and miss selection for me. Although the misses outnumber the hits, the hits when present are potent and enough to save this collection. This collection would be best for those looking for lyrics than traditional poetry.

[malaak⚔️ · Rating 2 out of 5]

They always say to never judge a book by its cover.

Bending The Universe drew me in immediately. The cover is beautiful, and seeing the different sections of poems-society, love, life, personal, nature-got me excited to start it. I even read a couple of poems on tumblr, so when I sw it was the same poet I was even more excited to read it. I think it was because I had such high expectations for it that it disappointed me so much.

It was a strong start: Diversity, The Fire's Still Burning, and Welcome To America were great...but they were very much alike. Most of Wetch's society poems were about the same thing over and over, and as the book continued I felt like I was reading the diary of an old angry pessimist disgruntled over "the new generation." I mean, the poet is a millenial himself, and it felt like he thought he was above everyone else. He just kept critisizing and critisizing about how terrible we are compared to the older generations. He kept romantisizing older times, but does he not realize hoe much better we are in most ways too? That LGBT rights have progessed because of the millenials, that the videos we all "care too much about" that go viral are a lot of times videos exposing racism? That social media platforms are used for much more than "selfies," but for social movements too? That--above all else--the only people hindering us from progressing forward and electing good politicians are the old people stuck in their time?

The amount of poems I've read in the book that was just him congradulating his own genius and "talent" was exhausting. I just skimmed through a lot of it. Especially since a lot of the writing in itself had a very elementary kind of feel to them. I don't hate rhymed poems, but I hate them done wrong. I hate that when he couldn't make it sound as lyrical as he wanted, he would leave out words and kind of force the sentence, making it sound disjointed and juvenile.

I found myself skimming most of it. It got repetitive and boring, and I kind of want my money back. I only rated it two stars because there were at least 5-6 poems I enjoyed (out of 100, yikes).

Overall, I wouldn't recommend. Don't waste your money.

[Kathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like poetry, a dinosaur, I know, but there it is. And so when I sit down with a book of poetry, I look forward to the images and phrases that are about to be presented to me. I know that you're not meant to like every poem, or even necessarily enjoy them. But they should speak to you, touch you.

Bending the Universe is more like having someone rant at you, about everything, in your face, and you can't get them to stop, because they like to hear themselves talk/rant. AUGHHH!!! Who needs that? Most of the poems reflect a person with a jaded, angry, pessimistic view of the world. His philosophy seems to be summed up in the title of one poem 'Life is Profoundly Sad' and in lines from other poems: "maybe happiness isn't for me", "disabused of all these notions of hope, what can you attain when your spirit's broke?".

In Honesty in Writing, he says "I've shown beauty, but held back the darkness". I find that immensely ironic, as this book is by far full of depressing, sad poems.

As in anything, there are exceptions: To Love is to Live; Choice; Clearing the Scoreboard; and A Hundred Billion Stars are among them. But in a book of 100 poems (gleaned from his 400 poems), four non-depressing, pessimistic poems is not enough to make this work for me.

At the end of the book, we learn that these poems were written when the author was 19 years old. How sad that one so young should be so unhappy and jaded.

The illustrations by Malachi Paulock (done at age 16) are amazing! This young man has a bright future. Unless Justin Wetch changes his outlook on life, he will not have a happy one.

Thanks to NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for providing me with an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are strictly my own.

[annika burman · Rating 4 out of 5]

*3.5
This is one of the best poetry books I’ve ever read, but that’s not saying much. I was looking for contemporary poetry that doesn’t feel like it’s just a collection of quotes off Pinterest. I wanted something more than that. In the end, I flipped through this book in the store, and loved most of the poems I read. After one of them made me tear up, I knew I had to read it. Unfortunately, when I was reading about 150 poems in a row, they lost their charm. I got used to the formatting, and many poems felt too redundant. I enjoyed them more individually than as part of a book. I recommend reading like three poems a day, while also reading another book. Otherwise, you lose that extreme feeling of satisfaction at every nice rhyme at the end to tie up all prior stanzas.
However, I am still giving this four stars, because I enjoyed it, and there were many poems that resonated with me. Some of my favorites include:

Growing Up

Church

Welcome to America (favorite in section)

What I Fell in Love With

Forever (overall favorite)

Choice

Write Your Name

Retirement

Music Theory (of Life)

Hiding From Silence

The Actor

Honesty In Writing

Sadistic Fiction

Season of Love

The last section, Nature, surely fell flat for me. Maybe if I had slowed down, I would’ve enjoyed it more, but I couldn’t find truth or vulnerability in those pages. Some were nice, but it was simply not as good as the others.

I would recommend this book to someone who enjoys contemporary poetry, or wants to start reading more poetry. It wasn’t hard to understand, but still poetic. There were not many narrative poems (thank GOD).

[The Book Witch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sighs.... Where do I begin.

The best way I can describe these poems is a baby boomer complaining about millennials and their technology. It holds a pessimistic tone throughout the book. It seems like the author seems to think of himself quite highly and honestly better than others for not being the same. With that type of tone in the poems it took away from the enjoyment of them.

I also found the structure to be immature. Some poems would have been so much better if he just changed the words or didn't try so hard to make it rhyme.

There is one poem, Midnight, which infuriated me.

"Midnight is the cruellest of hours, breeding
Dark thoughts out of the blackness, freeing
Despair from the prison of happiness, meeting
Anxiety and fear in a treacherous alley, waiting..."

The whole point and the comma and the next word is simply to make it rhyme but if you ask me it disrupted the flow of this poem. If he removed that comma and moved the final word of each line to the beginning of the next it would have came across so much better than it did. And this problem of flow within the poem is pretty common in this book.

Feel free to give it a shot, personally I regret spending the money on it that I did.

[Andge (Down the Rabbit Hole) · Rating 5 out of 5]

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4.5 stars

I've never been much of a poetry kinda gal but this book - this author, really - just totally gets me. His heart and the way he sees the world is very similar to how I am. It makes all his poems resonate so much more strongly with me. I am so very glad I picked up this book. Every section has something, although reading the heartbreak in his Love section and his general thoughts in his Personal section were by far my favourites.

Overall, I don't think you have to be a poetry person to enjoy what Justin had to write here. The experiences we've had shape who we are and some people's outlets for emotions is through writing. I am grateful that he penned these as they are always very personal and from the heart. I would totally recommend you take a glimpse through these poems and see how much they resonate with you too.

[Nathaniel Darkish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whenever a collection of poetry hits on such a variety of topics and themes-- in this case, sociopolitical poetry, love, nature, and self-- it can be hard to pin down feelings for the collection as a whole. I'm giving this 3 stars because some of the poetry was very good, some of the poetry was so-so but had some great lines that really stuck out, and some really failed to catch my interest at all. I'm not really into nature poetry-- it feels very samey to me-- so I didn't really care for any of those poems. The love poems had some great lines but the poems themselves were just already. The poetry dealing with issues of self and sociopolitical stuff were a mixture of good and meh, the problem in the weaker poems usually being that they felt too constrained when they should have really dug in to raw emotional imagery.

[Claire · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's worth mentioning that there are two main branches of poetry published in this day and age: "literary" poetry that comes largely from authors with MFAs, and pop poetry, which is more straightforward and generally written by people outside the literary establishment.

This book belongs to the latter group, and while I can admit that I'm biased in favor of literary poetry, the pseudo-progressive attitudes of the author detract from what already reads as cliche-riddled and uninspired language. Many readers are more interested in the messages of the poems than the style, and I ultimately think both are lacking here. The speaker of the poems broods on the state of the world and failed teen romances without bringing anything new or interesting to the table. This sounds like it was written by a sheltered high schooler, and based on the information I've read about the author, it was.