The Spirit of a Poem is a small book with a collection of poems. There are also pictures by Aazam Yaqoob. The poems speak of weather, thoughts, ideas, and islands. Fruit was even an inspiration for the author. The poems are short and easy to read.
The mood of this book is simply dull. My imagination was barely even sparked by the use of plain font and common adjectives. The overall structure of the book was rather plain and boring. It seemed almost as if anyone could have written these poems as there was no distinct voice from the author. With this book, it would seem that Yaqoob didn't have a set purpose in mind besides putting a few of his poems into book form. The writing is nothing special, almost like a cold cup of coffee. No warmth or flavor to be found. The strength would be that Yaqoob was willing to put his creations out there into the world.
The book contains multiple grammatical and formatting mistakes, and I wonder how they could have escaped editing. The flaws caused me to become distracted and put off by the book. In his poem, "Rain and the Universe's Way of Life," there was a glaring mistake of a homophone. The line was, "I here drip, drip," I feel he must have meant, "I hear drip, drip." Yaqoob wrote three lined Japanese haikus, which should have contained five syllables on the first line, seven on the second and five on the third. None of them had the correct amount of syllables.
Finally, while poems don't necessarily have to rhyme, it is commonly found and an appreciated break from the non-rhyming variety. I don't believe any of Yaqoob's poems rhymed, save for a "question" and "section" pair. I was disappointed that it didn't have any interesting rhymes to experience. Granted, this book was self-published, but I feel that it could use a fair amount of editing and constructive criticism before I would recommend anyone to read this book.
Reviewer Age:14
Reviewer City, State and Country: Doylestown, Pennsylvania USA
