Mariel Cutler

Book Review

 

 

 

The Best of My Love

By Aaron Kiely

 

In this timeless poetry book Kiely sets up meaning in a way it can only be felt. Starting with one long poem called POEM followed bye what he calls NOVEL and ending with a hidden UNTITLED piece. This sets things up quiet nicely almost forcing you to read the whole thing through in one sitting. This is something that ugly duckling press is well known for and presumable so. The set up of all there books is very productive and always makes reading them enjoyable and easy, Kiely obviously was aware of this when choosing what press to work with. Using repetition with slight change in each line feels so similar to the way Rodrigo Tosano does. This is something that a lot of poets do horrible wrong, but Aaron does this with grace with lines like

“not enough spirit
not enough spirit that unites
too much spirit that isolates
too much spirit in us that isolates

too much spirit
in our thinking
that isolates “

keeping you on your toes the while read.

Reading The best of my love felt like time stopped for me to read it, it was like taking a vacation to an island, it was an ocean of words and had me fully submerged the whole time.