This poetry book reads like a confession. It has pieces of inspiration and advice. Each page reads like a random thought. There is not really a flow.
One thing that bothered me is the title. This is confusing for librarians to find books that are named the same as other books.

While the themes of heartbreak and redemption and self-acceptance are good, I don't tend to be a fan of instagram-style poetry like this example:

some say
if it doesn't hurt
it can't be love
but
if it does
you
shouldn't want it anyway

Can't argue with the sentiment, but not my favorite style of poetry, and if the language of the poems doesn't move me, it's not likely the message will either. Just not for me.

becoming. by Renaada Williams is a lovely collection of poetry to fill your TBR shelf with!

The poems are short, sweet and simplistic. They are the type of poems I want to read on a rainy day where I can stare off into the distance with my tea and ponder their meaning. It's quite lovely, to be honest. They aren't too long, they aren't full of weird metaphors that leave me confused, and I found them to be even put in interesting designs. I quite liked them!

Even the acknowledgements were in a poem, and I found that to be super cute!

I'd highly recommend these if you want some poetry and want a quick read. These are beautifully written and make for a quick read.

Three out of five stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for giving me a free copy of this book in exchange of an honest review.

In general, this was a middle-of-the-road poetry collection for me. There was nothing about it to despise, but there was also nothing compelling enough to keep me enamored with the poems.

I mostly found the writing style of this poetry collection too simplistic for my tastes. Although there were certainly a few lines which stood out to me, but the overall effect was lukewarm. I found myself looking for those lines that stuck out while the rest of the language blurred away.

That being said, I did feel like thematically the poems were interesting. There were definitely different experiences delved into in this collection and explored quite well. Furthermore, the line breakage of the poems felt purposeful and enhanced the general effect of the word choice. The writing style wasn't my favorite, but it certainly wasn't sloppy.

Overall, this was an enjoyable read. It just won't stick in my memory for long.

I read a fair amount of poetry, and this was just not it. The writing is simple, but not in a good way. It reads like this: "I cry. I am sad." There's nothing profound on that, there's nothing I take away after finishing this book. It was a fast read and for that I am thankful, and it was really easy to read. But I say it, again, not in the best way. As a writer myself, I don't feel like this was "it".

Lovely read! Some poems resonated with me and some didn't. Not sure if I would pick this poem book up and re-read.

This modern poetry collection was very simple but really touching. A lot of poems in this collection hit very close to home for me, and because of this I personally loved this collection and would definitely recommend it to other readers. Also, the collection touched on many important topics such as self-love, depression and racism. My only (small) complaint is that some of the poems were a bit hard to read because the sentences were broken off in weird places sometimes, so I had to re-read them a few times.

"you
are the prettiest bouquet
of dying flowers
i
have ever seen."

Thank you NetGalley and Andrews McMeel for providing me with an e-arc.

I came across this one while browsing through my favourite publishers 'Recently Added' list on NetGalley and the gorgeous cover caught my eye! I couldn't resist even though my TBR was overflowing and I am stuck in a book slump...

Divided into 4 sections: heartbreak, mental illness, being colored in america and self-love, 'becoming' is a collection of poems which failed to live up to what it promises and is every bit of everything one has read before. Rarely do I criticise a book harshly but when something had the potential and fails to reach it, it is highly disappointing to readers. What mostly disappointed me is the improper portrayal of the themes Renaada has chosen; the themes picked are wonderful and necessary but she failed to actually touch the theme on a level it had the potential to.
The poems in this collection are more of something that can be used as captions for your social media posts as just words stringed along to form a 'poem' that had already been said before in thousands of variations: in lines that voice the general thought in the peak of literary beauty and with a soothing simplicity. "Yes, so many have said it before but have you?" is taken in quite literally and the general notion behind this is that we all have something unique and original to add to something that has already been said before and I missed that aspect in this collection.
The poems felt out of place and it was really hard to find a connection. A poetry collection should have a tone throughout the collection to follow through and connect with, not the lack thereof.

I cannot deny the fact that there were a few 'poems' that made this reading experience a bit bearable. Like the one I quoted in the beginning, few had the power to resonate with one's heart and to open a portal of thoughts.

Renaada has the potential to write some badass poems. Contemporary poetry allows freedom to explore one's thought processes and experiences in eclectic ways but what many forget is the fact that it is still poetry. And that should be something one should, at any cost, remember. Poetry is one of the most beautiful forms of art that we, as humans, have created and every word we piece together should respect some rules of the art form, even while exploring the continuously evolving form!

Renaada's work is something you would enjoy if you are starting out in the genre. Sadly, this was not the one for me. Many loved this collection and even found it relaxing so it is still worth giving a try if you wish to.

Book: Becoming
Author: Renaada Williams
Genre: Poetry, Feminism
Review:
"Being broken is a matter of opinion"

Beautiful, at the same time aesthetic cover. The cover has the same feelings which the poem conveys in this book.

"some say
if it doesn’t hurt
it can’t be love
but
if it does
you
shouldn’t want it anyway"

Becoming is a simple yet powerful little book of modern poetry. Williams' poetry collection is very personal and touches on subjects such as depression, abuse, self-help and self-love.
My Opinion:
This book is simple, but it doesn't stand out much. Most of the elements in her books are repeated and similar themes can be seen in many modern poetry.
This book loses its essence with grammatical mistakes and unnecessary spaces and sentence are broken to give emphasis, but in this book, it is too much.

A good book for amateur or new reader's. I would say this book needs some editing and some more creativity. There is a potential yet to be discovered.

“I want you know that you are amazing, I know that you are beautiful”

What a great start to this book. I loved reading it. By the time I finished, I felt amazing and beautiful. As you go through her problems, you get to feel it as she becomes herself. As she realizes that she can be herself without someone else.

I highly recommend.

Beautifully written. This book makes an impact. Becoming is about the process of becoming. It is about the process of learning, moving forward, affirming the truths about oneself, and throwing away the fodder. I think the world needs to read this book.

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and, Renaada Williams for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I’d never heard of the poet before. I like discovering new poets. Overall, I enjoyed the poems in this collection. My personal bug bear is that the poems don’t have titles. I like my poems to have titles but this is becoming a common style in modern poetry. The poems are very simple, deceptively so because they deal with far deeper ideas and subjects than you expect at first glance. They were easy to read and resonated on some level with me. Like a lot of modern poetry, the poems are personal as well as universal. I really like the cover as well.

Becoming is so terribly moving it sometimes hurts. And I say it as so because Renaada Williams doesn’t shy away from the experiences of her depression. Williams doesn’t make it pretty or give it a complete 'it’ll be okay' vibe. It’s gritty and real and something to still be worked through.

Bad days. Good days. Williams bares it all when it comes to mental health. Then on top of that, she includes love and loss and racism with heart and bitter honesty.

Becoming feels like just the tipping point to her story and it has put Williams on my radar of authors to watch and I can’t wait to watch her grow in her art.

A beautiful book of poetry, Short poems, simple words, but a powerful and very personal message. Renaada isn't afraid to show pieces of herself through these poems and in turn makes us all less afraid to speak our own true feelings.

I would have loved reading this book. but technology outsmarted me. I cannot, for the life of me, open the file, and I even tried to convert it into mobi or epub or pdf format. If somebody could help me out with reading a .acsm format, it would be appreciated.

But I must confess I am rather fond of the cover art and the description. Especially the colouring and lettering of the name was alluring to me. I wish the author great success!

I loved this book, it has really good poetry.
I received this book through Net Galley and the Publisher Gallery Books, and was not required to give a positive review.

Delicate, elegant, and hopeful poetry with full of optimistic energy that heals the lost souls and broken hearts. I love the way it expresses the feelings about depression and grief. It feels like each single word speaks out loud the pain we have struggled with, also bringing the courage to make us fight against demons inside our minds and find a glimpse of light in a forlorn valley.

There are 4 parts, which is separately about love never lived, matter over mind, everything BLACK, and save yourself, in the poetry. Each part seems like the stages of knowing the actual wound inside us, finding out sources of pain, trying to seek the hope from the darkness, and helping ourselves be reborn. That's how these poems impress me. While reading, I feel that I've been understood. It knows the pain and negative feelings rooting deep in my heart. It's not easy to get them away; however, the words tender those scars and let me understand it's not my fault to be weak. We all suffer from those indescribable sorrow, so we are not alone.

becoming. Become the one who know how powerful we can be. Become the one having faith and will to be a survivor.

Here's one of my favorite quotes that I want to share with at last:

we are created in the darkness
forced into the light

I love poetry in every shape and form. Free verse, contemporary poetry is my favorite form of poetry, because of the strong emotional appeals they contain, their turn of phrase, their rhythm and their distinct dissonance.

So when I got my hands on becoming by Reenada Williams, I was truly excited. Unfortunately, and I don't know what euphemism to use here, William's short poems were more like tumblr entries and Instagram captions than actual poetry. To be perfectly honest, they were rather generic.

Modern poetry is relaxed and has plenty of freedom. Modern poetry often involves breaking sentences into phrases or stanzas. I know all of this. However, good modern poetry uses that particular style to create dissonance--something that, when overused (as was in this book), just feels like lazy writing.

Furthermore, the poetry book is essentially about growth, about transformations and learning but because of how unorganized the book is, it's hard to see any of those things. There's virtually no story, no start-to-finish narrative. Now this wouldn't have been a problem if the individual poems had a message, or a story or any kind of point to them at all.

In summary, I don't think I would be recommending this to anybody. Perhaps readers who are absolutely new to poetry will enjoy Renaada Williams book. Fans of Rupi Kaur might enjoy them too. Regardless, I still cannot bring myself to recommend it to anybody, even those who are exploring the genre--I'd recommend Elizabeth Acevado, or Andrea Gibson or Aracelis Girmay instead.

This book was a pretty quick read due to the length of the poems. There was a lot of bite-sized platitudes & moments where this author's intention to uplift was very clear. I really appreciated the mind over matter section and found myself bookmarking a few of those poems. However, overall, I wasn't as drawn into this as I'd like to have been. We had some that were as short as one-liners which is nice but it felt more like I was reading through someone's jotted down notes. That has more to do with ME than the book as I am more appreciative of poetry that contains imagery and builds up. I will add that there was some very raw moments, a lot of honesty, and inspiration to be found throughout this book, which I valued.

becoming. is a beautiful poetry collection that covers feminism, sexuality, race and mental health. There's so much hope in it and several of the poems are empowering to read.