Review: Olives by A. E. Stallings

Publication Date: April 30, 2012

Synopsis:
A collection of poems from A.E. Stallings, a notable, award-winning poet about life, marriage, and motherhood.

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Rating: 2.5 stars

Date Read: March 15, 2018

Thoughts:
This is the second collection I've had to read for my poetry class this semester, and I'm pretty sure I have one or two more to come.

I definitely didn't like this as much as Stateside, even though I didn't give that a very high rating either. This poetry collection seemed to be more pretentious than Stateside, and I had a much harder time following what was going on. Even the synopsis that I wrote for this had to be partially taken from Goodreads because I had no idea what the collection was talking about.

The form, rhyme, and content felt all over the place and I couldn't understand why this was assigned to us for class reading. It didn't give me a good enough impression of the poet to want to look for more of her stuff, nor did it make me want to like poetry. All it did was confirm that I'm not a poetry person and pretty much never will be.

It's bad enough that I had to read this for an assignment and write a response to it, but I just couldn't get into it. At one point, my friend told me that I looked like I was dying while reading this. That's how much I struggled to read through a 70 page collection of poems. It took me over two hours to get it done, and after that, I couldn't start writing my response because it hurt my brain too much to try.

I've known for years that I'm not a poetry person and I'm probably never going to like it. That's completely fine with me. I took this class knowing that I would have to read poetry, but also with the hope that I can at least gain a good appreciation for good poetry. Unfortunately, so far, I'm not very moved in either direction regarding poetry. If anything, this just made me so sure that I will never actually like poetry, which is terrible because I have six more weeks of this poetry class.

Character(s):
I really didn't like the narrator's voice, and since that's the only character in the collection, I didn't like any of the characters.

Overall:
2.5 stars. Do not recommend this. Apparently I look like I'm dying while reading this.