Book Review | Deeper Water by Juliana Mae

 

Title: Deeper Water

Author: Juliana Mae

Release Date: March 1st 2016

GoodReads Blurb:

A sampling of 31 freeform poems released in honor of Poetry Month. This continuation to her first book delves deeper into the mind of Miss Unsocial Butterfly, Juliana Mae, with a common theme of heartbreak and fear of it. A full book, called In Deeper Water, will be released later this year.

GoodReads Link

Review:

A while ago, Julianna Mae reached out to me asking if I would review her first book, In the Heart of an Unsocial Butterfly. I started the book and then life got in the way and I moved a few times since then so I just recently located the book again. I plan to read it soon but when I saw this I decided to read it.

I like the cover image on the book. The cover, of course, isn't everything but I just thought that I would say that. I looked up the book on GoodReads and saw that it only had one review so I decided to read it. The review talked about the phrase "middle school diary poetry." Apparently it is used to refer to angst poetry that is often about requited love. The reviewer brought up a good point that I agree with. This poetry may be about unrequited love (and a lot of it in this sampling of poems is) but does that mean that there is no value to it? No, I don't think so. We really shouldn't be giving young girls (or boys) the impression that their thoughts are not important. And what if a poem about unrequited love is done well? It isn't as if older poets never write of unrequited love, either. I'm a poet, as well and for a long time much of what I wrote was poetry similar to this in that it was about a crush or unrequited love. I think a lot of poets go through that stage and there is nothing wrong with that. I'm almost twenty five now and am already writing about these things much less but that doesn't mean that writing those poems was not an important experience.

I really enjoyed Juliana's poetry. It is evident how much feeling she puts into it and I would read more poetry by her. Some favorites in this collection are:

- Storing Honey

- My Paper Heart - the concept may be a little cliche but I enjoyed the poem all the same.

- Archeology

- Habits

- My Puzzle Pieces - as with My Paper Heart, the idea of puzzle pieces may be a bit cliche but I still enjoyed the poem.

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I look forward to when this full collection is out and I especially look forward to seeing how Juliana's poetry evolves as she gets older. I give this one 4 quills.