I’ve always loved poetry, but I recently realized that I hadn’t read any in quite some time. While I have more than a few poetry books on my shelves, I thought I would venture out and discover something new.
I found Dawn Olmo in the #WritingCommunity on Twitter. If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s a wonderful oasis of writers and poets and artists who share their work, encourage others, and have fun talking about our craft. And poking fun at it.
I bought a copy of Olmo’s Lost Inside My Mind from Amazon. I wasn’t sure what to expect as far as content and style, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it was a mixture of humor, sadness, and deeply personal exploration. In other words, exactly what poetry should be.
I enjoyed the fact that Olmo wasn’t afraid to explore different styles of verse, subtly showing her nerdy side with a quick Star Wars reference that made me smile, but then switching gears and speaking from the heart about love and loss. Passion flows across the pages in various forms, from love and sex to fear and despair.
And while she made me smile and laugh, she also brought me to tears with some of her more personal poems. As an author, I respect that. It’s not easy to bare oneself on the page, but Olmo does it unflinchingly.
After a hiatus of several years, I’m glad that Lost Inside My Mind was the first volume I picked up. Is it perfect? No, but it’s honest and raw and passionate, and that’s all that matters.
RB