Unraveling: Poems

 

Publication date: March 8, 2022

My Thoughts:

I am not a good critic for poetry, as the poems that I like are ones that I have a visceral reaction to, but that reaction comes from different things. It just depends. In other words, I like who I like, but I cannot explain why I trust their poetic voice. What grabs me, though, is when I hear poets read their own pieces. I feel like poets reading their own pieces is part of the visceral package. 

With that in mind, I picked up this book because Brandon Leake is the Season 15 winner of America's Got Talent. I know this because the publishers put that down on the cover. I have never seen a whole season of America's Got Talent, but I have seen enough clips to know that a spoken word poet is not the typical act that gets the judges excited, so I needed to request this book.

His poetry is fine, but it sits on the page like the plastic food outside of the Japanese restaurants. It looks real enough, meaning from all outward appearances, they are recognizable as poems. However, I am missing his voice in my head. I don't know how he would read it, and since I am reading this pre-publication, Amazon does not allow me to listen to a snippet. I am guessing, especially since he is a AGT winner, that it is in the delivery, the way he enunciates the words, inserts breath and life into lines, perhaps moves his hands like Amanda Gorman does as if punctuating and pushing essence into the poems, that this is where the corpse of words turns into living material. 

From "Living" -

I'm not searching for a new beginning/I'm somewhere in the middle/Not quite hopelessly searching/Yet not quite woefully unearthing/All of these dead parts of me (p.8)

I guess, without having ever heard him read his own work, I too am somewhere in the middle. . .

From the Publisher:

From famous spoken word poet, artistic educator, and founder/CEO of “Called to Move” Brandon Leake comes his debut poetry collection Unraveling. In an era of self love, the ability to love oneself is only as effective as the ability to know oneself. Throughout his collection, Leake asks readers to look at something beautiful, yet still see its flaws. On the flip side, he encourages readers to look at something evil, and yet still see the beauty it holds.

Universally relatable, surprisingly educational, and all around powerful, Unraveling is a collection of poetry inspiring us to slow down, breathe, and read between the lines.