''Learning the art of letting go has been the skill my mind has always sought''

Clarity & Connection felt like a long therapy session, while exploring themes of love, past wounds, self-awareness and specially friendship. I was surprised in a good way that a poetry book had poems about friends, considering how rare it is to find any at all. Thank you Yung for talking about friends. It's absolutely necessary and we really should talk about them more often.

Overall, I really liked it. Not the best poetry book I've ever read, but it's worth the reading. However, this should've had half the pages it has.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me an e-arc in exchange of an honest review.

I loved the simplicity of the cover of Clarity & Connection by Yung Pueblo. I also liked how Pueblo divided his work into sections such as self-awareness, binding, the love between us, growing, and a new life. I personally identified with several of the selections. #ClarityConnection #NetGalley

Reading Yung Pueblo’s second volume, ‘Clarity & Connection’ (Andrews McMeel), feels similar to listening to a wise family member or friend. His messages are not patronizing and he doesn’t try to convince his readers of the verity of what he writes. He shares his words to serve those undertaking their own journey of personal transformation.

He reminds me of Eckhart Tolle, the world renowned spiritual teacher and author of ‘The Power of Now’ and ‘A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose’ in relation to the emphasis he places on mindfulness, meditation and love.

‘Clarity & Connection’ concentrates on understanding how past wounds impact our present relationships. Pueblo illustrates how intense emotions accumulate in our subconscious and condition us to act and react in certain ways.

If you are open to his words they may be able to act as a guide to help you excavate and release your past in order to create the space which is required for growth.

‘Clarity & Connection’ has been written in five parts entitled ‘self-awareness’, ‘binding’, the love between us’, ‘growing’ and ‘a new life’.
Should you be looking for motivation relating to personal transformation, building self-awareness, and deepening your connection with others then this book is for you.

Yung Pueblo, also known as Diego Perez, was born in Ecuador and immigrated to the United States as a child. He grew up in Boston and attended Wesleyan University. During a silent Vipassana meditation course in 2012, he saw that real healing and liberation were possible. He became more committed to his meditation practice while living in New York City. The results he witnessed firsthand moved him to describe his experiences in writing.

Today, Diego resides in Western Massachusetts with his wife, where they live quietly and meditate daily.

A huge thank you to @NetGalley and @andrewsmcmeel for an ARC of ‘Clarity & Connection’’ by Yung Pueblo.

I am certain that this work will help some people and some will find it very useful. But for me it's not good poetry and it's not self help I need at this moment. Really just seemed like mantras or good advice with line breaks:

"find a partner who is as committed to
supporting you in good times as they are
in the tough moments of growth and healing.
coming together as imperfect people can be
challenging, imperfection can sometimes cause
unintentional conflict, especially when one is
going through a moment of inner turbulence."

I hope that someone finds solace and guidance from it, but it was not the book for me.

It feels like Yung Pueblo is my online therapist. I cannot deny the fact that his two books did attack me personally but in a great way. Yung Pueblo's words are heavy and compulsive. It will leave a scar in your soul and will teach you lessons. Clarity and Connection is very raw, honest, and brave. This book will keep you alive.

I've given my full review of this book on my youtube channel. To see the review click: https://youtu.be/eiPcqwLLZWQ.

i usually like to pick up a poetry book after reading a heavy novel, and this book was just perfect for my break. even though self-awareness motifs are present in every such book as the answer to all our chaos, yung pueblo presents the lessons and assertions with such detail, it's beautiful. poets like rupi kaur, lang leav and atticus usually stick to subtle poems though with the same themes and rarely use such detail. but yung elaborates on cliched poetic themes like turning inwards, loving oneself, being vulnerable in a relationship, etc. with such finesse that i doubt even a single soul would be unable to comprehend them. but umm as expected, after a 100 pages the poems get repetitive with just old lessons put into new words. but anyhow, it's a good book to read in the morning while having your coffee. here's a favorite of mine.

next time you feel agitated
because you are falling back into past patterns,
remember that simply being aware
that you are repeating the past
is a sign of progress

self-awareness comes before
the leap forward
in your personal transformation

This book was sent to me as an ARC on NetGalley. However all opinions are of my own.
This poetry but I could get a huge five out of five stars for me. Every single poem and every single sentence spoke to me in a way that I wish I had read sooner. Most of the poems are about attachment connection love grief and loss, which to me is something I am dealing with at the moment. I’ve screenshot it so many of the poems so that I can write them down and always go back to them. I think that Yung has such a captivating way of writing that I am so excited to see more from him.

This was Instagram poetry at its finest, albeit more experimental in terms of length and rhythm. It was simplistic, pretty pointless, and oh yes, endless, to the point where the same idea kept repeating in multiple poems, and the volume wasn't the shortest, either.
It has a target audience of Rupi-Kaur-press-space-&-share-life-advice fans.

Yung Pueblo continues his poetic exploration of reflection and relationships through a journey of healing and embracing a better self-image.

I struggle to call this a poetry collection because it really does feel more like a self-help or personal growth book that is disguised by the breaking up of sentences in a format vaguely resembling poetry. And, unfortunately, if you don't need what he's talking about in this book then I don't think you'll connect with it as profoundly as intended.

For me personally, it wasn't an outstanding revelatory experience because I wasn't in a place where these topics really pertained to me. I feel like there is a certain level of universality to it but that's ultimately for someone else to decide.

I also hate mincing my words but I don't want to be mean so what I'll say next I'll try to say delicately. This really does read like short essays that are broken up to be more visually appealing. However, they lose a lot of impact that way and all I could notice was the very broken nature of the syntactic flow.

Unfortunately, this was a miss for me but I hope others will enjoy it and get some learning experiences out of it.

This is a review for NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, NetGalley for the opportunity.

A book with the intention that we need to maintain a healthy mindset, honestly we all go through phases that we let ourselves go, and we forget to take care of ourselves.
The writing is made in such a meaningful and kind way, really allow us to self-evaluate and meditate on our mental health.
A book loaded with love. With interesting tools to nurture and improve, your past, and your present mindset.

I've read Pueblo's work in the past and though it didn't really connect with me I wanted to give their work another shot. I did like this work of poetry slightly more than his first, but it again just fell a little short. I thought the messages of the poems though uplifting, did get quite repetitive. Some of the poems sounded almost the exact same with slightly different words. I think the style of this work might have worked better as a memoir so that each thought and idea could be fully fleshed out. I don't think the writing itself was bad, but the overall message didn't truly move me. I think I understood that this book was supposed to be about self awareness, working on one's self and emotions, reactions, etc. but it also almost made it sound if you do a, b, and c you'll see results in no time. I'm sure many other people will be able to relate to this, but it just wasn't for me.

I read these poems like mantras: simple observations musing on moments we might experience, and meditations on the feelings we might get from them. There’s no flowery language that might misconstrue any meanings: it’s realistic, succinct, positive advice to look forward with. It’s how to be radically honest with yourself to heal. It’s hopeful, underrated, quietly brave. It’s how to take a step forward, today. It’s how to build a home within yourself to see clearly from. How to put into focus the things you sometimes can’t see. I appreciated it’s directness, and was surprised by the ‘aha moments’ I had. You can find yourself, here.

This is an excellent work that touches on many subtle, fragile, painful and incredibly important topics: feeling of oneself in this world, in relationships with people, toxicity, about how to leave the past and move forward.
Usually I swallow such collections like buns, but I read this collection thoughtfully for a very long time. I needed time to comprehend and accept what had been written, to completely let the written pass through me.
It's great that now there are such works, people suffering from mental anguish (myself included) can read them and feel that they are not alone.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book!

I have been a fan of Diego Perez aka Yung Pueblo's on Instagram for a couple of years now and was very excited to read this. Unfortunately, my expectations were not met. Although there are many great lessons in these pages on relationships and on one's self, the poems are redundant and come across a little too much like a "self-help-guide" for my liking and definitely not what I want in a book of poetry. This book may be ideal for anyone who may be struggling with trust issues or security in their relationship as it may give you a lot to think about. For me, these poems came across like mini mantras or snippets of advice that ask you to concentrate on the "why" behind the way you act and react (it's kind of like a minor form of cognitive behavior therapy minus the licensed professional and in book form?) If you want a taste of what is in this book you only have to read Yung Pueblo's tweets.

Poetry is highly subjective, but a lot of these poems felt more like daily affirmations than poems to me. Most of the longer poems feel like the author borrowed common lines or passages from relationship self-help books. There is a lot of repetition both within many of the poems and across the different poems in the collection. There were a few solid poems in here, but overall this collection felt generic and repetitive.

This book is very similar in style / layout to other popular poetry of the time - short, brief with meaning spread out over pages of micro poems. This is a good read, a quick but deeply meaningful collection.

I NEED A PHYSICAL COPY OF THIS BOOK ASAP! The poems in this book are so heart felt and I could see myself in a lot of them. I love a good poetry book and I have become a fan of this Author's writing style because of this book. I am going to have this book on my bookshelf one day soon!

2 stars

Self help statements in the guise of poems. The content isn’t bad, but I’d have rather read the ideas in essay format, expanded upon & explained better. These poems just didn’t feel very poem-like to me.

[What I liked:]

•Some poems are generic self help/therapy/mindfulness concepts; some are reflections on the poet’s own experiences. I preferred the latter, though those still were vague enough they felt generic. There were a handful of poems I connected with, that resonated enough to bookmark to come back to later.

•The ideas expressed in the poems are worthwhile, solid concepts about communication & emotional health my therapist would approve of. There are also some Buddhist teachings mixed in, which are interesting.


[What I didn’t like as much:]

•The poems read like self help platitudes in free verse form or in long paragraphs. Nothing particularly special or sparkly or piercing about the language.

•A lot of the poems are repetitive—the same ideas expressed multiple times throughout the volume without much meaningful variation.

[I received an ARC ebook copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Thank you for the book!]

Good stuff here. Yung Pueblo really knows how to capture the art of written word and mixing it with making relationships and connections to other souls.