Glass Hearts and Broken Promises

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You can’t keep waiting for somebody who isn’t capable of figuring out that you’re also someone who is worth fighting for (105) I thought of our very first fight. I thought of the way you yelled. I thought of the first time I caught you keeping secrets from me the things that you never told me but somehow, I already knew. The ones that made me feel worthless and unloved the ones that I pushed aside because I loved you… And then I thought of our last day together the last day we were two halves of the same whole the day we talked and cried as we agreed that this was the end (131) Glass Hearts & Broken Promises is a very modern collection of poems in that it has no rhymes, no verse, no titles, and barely any punctuation. And that could have been fine! Some of my favourite poems ever are in free verse! Anyone who's ever read any poem Mary Oliver wrote knows free verse can be done well. After leaving high school, I kept a diary for a couple years because I was so heartbroken and lonely I didn't know where else to say it. Once, after several sleepless nights, I decided nothing else would convey my pain quite as well as poetry, and so of course I had to write a poem. I was 19, painfully naïve and inexperienced, writing in a language I wasn't really fluent in, drunk on tiredness, and hadn't written poetry since my high school literature teacher had us write one (1) poem when I was 15. I want to believe them when they say time heals your heartbreak but I can’t because I will always miss you and I will always love you and that heartbreak isn’t going anywhere. But that’s the thing with grief. Time may ease the pain but it’s never fully gone. I think about what life would have been like if you’d been there for me more (26)

I would have been disappointed if that had been as bad as it got, but I might have nonetheless found some pleasure in that strange, sweet pain you get when reading about someone else's pain (or someone else working through their pain?). But even that was impossible, because I felt absolutely nothing. PDF / EPUB File Name: Aisling_A_Spell_Unbinding_-_AE_Jurgens.pdf, Aisling_A_Spell_Unbinding_-_AE_Jurgens.epubIf you like the thought of reading something that feels like a friend is talking to you about their breakup and how they're healing from it (and how you could heal from yours), I think you're going to like it. If you like descriptive poems that are more abstract, this is definitely not for you. I think it could also work really well for people who haven't read a lot of poetry before. If this is not the case, and I'm simply hallucinating, then to that I say, other poets have written about heartbreak before and been more relatable to me, or I believe their poems were a little wittier and a bit punchier compared to this collection.

Admittedly, if you are new to poetry and looking for something easily digestible, this may be for you! It’s not too convoluted and honestly has at least one thing you can relate to, whether that is hope, heartbreak, self-care, the healing cycle, etc.

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Here, however, it served absolutely no purpose. It didn't create any ambiguity and the line breaks didn't highlight anything or make it more poignant. There was no assonance, no rhythm created by line length or repetition - I even struggled to find a single metaphor, anaphora, oxymoron, or literally any other literary device. It feels like I’ll always be a little bit broken and these scars will always remain because one time is all that it takes. One lie (46) I continued loving you despite knowing that you didn’t deserve me. I kept supporting you thinking that you were going to change I made excuses for the relationship thinking that it was going to be different this time around but it wasn’t because I couldn’t make you choose me or want me or even remember me when I was gone (89) When I first saw the description for this book, I got really excited because I love poetry that balances between pain and healing, so I was looking forward to the way it could help me feel seen and understood. However, the pain of the past is the biggest focus and the depth it goes to when it comes to healing is quite surface-level. The writing is also very simple and it reads more like a diary or a letter than poetry, which can be a good or bad thing, depending on your reading preferences. I would prefer something deeper & more detailed because it didn't bring me a lot of value like this. A lot of the messages were things I already knew, the writing was too plain for me, and it mainly gave me only negative emotions. As someone who does like free-verse, it was hard to even justify this as such. At times, the writing seemed clunky and full of cliches; an amalgamation of what I hate calling “instapoetry”. Perhaps it may have been my inability to connect with some of the topics such as that of heartbreak, but it didn’t necessarily seem profound, and something out of a cheesy romcom or a friend grasping at straws trying to convince you to get over your ex.

If what they were in was never love at all, then... they weren't actually in love? I don't know, this one confuses me. You cared about them more than anyone else in the world. Believed that they could change and you kept loving them even though they never deserved it and it was never enough because they walked away like it was nothing (126) Lately it feels like I’d be able to die from my broken heart. Like the tears and the heartache will never stop and there’s nothing you could say or do to make me forget the way I loved you (66) I’d spent forever waking up beside you. Learning the way you liked your coffee. Listening to what brought you joy in this world and consoling you when things didn’t go as planned. It was brutal letting all that go. I was suspended in a future that I thought we both had wanted and now that that’s gone (111) None of that can amound to poetry. Whatever this book is, it's certainly not poetry. It has none of its hallmarks, and because it's so full of clichés, it's not even moving. It's poetry only because it's being sold as such. In reality, this is simply a diary with strange line breaks and a meandering style (for a diary).While I was holding onto you, you were letting me go. While I was fighting to keep everything together you didn’t care about staying and you decided to leave (64) Glass Hearts and Broken Promises by Kayla McCullough is a collection of poems split into “The Break” and “The Mend” where readers are bared to the soul of McCullough as she tells the story of heartbreak, love, etc. It was very obviously a work of her soul, and you can tell from the emotion that seeps from many of the poems. Thank you to the publisher for providing an ARC through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. But there was a part of me that wanted to see you again. A part of me that didn’t want the last time I saw you to have been the last time. I was hoping that there’d be a day where we’d finally see each other again and everything would finally feel right. We would finally make sense that when day came. It didn’t end the way I had imagined it (143) Sometimes I wish you would have loved me like I loved you. love isn’t worrying about the other people they’re texting claiming that they’re just friends. So, if you would have loved me like I loved you I would’ve never learned that love was never you to begin with (134)

There were several poems I did like in this book. I think the author has potential, but this collection was not my favorite collection in terms of poetry. Glass Hearts & Broken Promises does none of that, and that's a dealbreaker for me. There are certainly a lot of words associated with vulnerability (pain, broken, grief, miss, etc.) but they're all used so plainly that it's impossible to feel the full weight of them. Language that we're used to is language that becomes purely utilitarian and loses its punch, and that's the only language that's used in this book. I don’t remember what you look like anymore. It hurts for me to admit that I close my eyes and I think I see you. I see your face and your hair. I see you sitting there on your couch reading a book or watching a movie but I don’t actually see you (39) Why did you come into my life acting like you loved me. Showing me something I never had before. Making me believe you cared and then leave? (27)If someone’s already looking for a way out you can’t hold onto them. No matter how much you love them they won’t stay (124) I’m over the nausea and the crying but you’re still the first thing I see as I get up in the morning and the last as I close my eyes at night (118) First, some words are outrageously misused (especially "trauma" - never mind that that's entirely telling and not showing). As an example: