Falling Through Love

''The world opens up to you in grief, swallows you-
like a paradox. Consider a blooming rosebud and the universe closing itself into it.''
*Excerpt from the poem ''Courage: Making Sure with My Actions That My Mother Knows Her Prayers Don't Work''


This collection has been divided into different sections.
The first section named 'Autumn Infinite' talks about poetry and being a poet, how the poet's family looks at the poet, beliefs and traditions in a family, a broken family, domestic violence and how it affects a child in the long run, death and the relationship with parents, lessons learnt in life, dreamers and dreams.

The second section named 'Were We Holding Hands?' talks about heartbreak, love and melancholy, unborn children, the past and the present, the ugliness of love and the beauty of it.

The third section named 'Hitched To Nothing' talks about the dark feelings and emotions the poet goes through, depression, suicide and a mnemonic of SAD PERSON which I found really clever and fitting, what and who God is, regrets, Stockholm Syndrome in relation to oneself.
In this section, I specifically loved the original verse in Hindi as well as in Urdu script under the poem ''A Juneberry Plant Doesn't Blossom In June''. It's beautiful.

Overall, this collection is so beautiful. I really appreciate the fabulous black and white ink illustrations. There were fantastic and added so much of attention to the whole collection.
But sometimes I cannot help feeling that the poet focussed more on the sentence structure or the length of the lines rather than the concept represented in a poem. It was really distracting and out of the blue. And I am really not a fan of strong swear words and finding fault with the god that we believe in

But it was a good read. It's personal as well as it must be so liberating for the poet to express so vividly what's in his heart and mind.

Thank you so much #NetGalley for providing me this copy of #FallingThroughLove

A lot of these sections resonated with me. I love how metaphorical the writing is. How it can mean what you need it to mean. These words were powerful.

I didn't know who Akif Kichloo was before reading this book, and didn't really know what to expect. I was blown away almost instantly and was sooo happy when I came across Punjabi references throughout the book. I am a huge lover of poetry and this is definitely one of my fav poetry books that I've read this year. Great job!!

I actually liked this book a lot eventhough I was facing a hard time choosing the best app to read it. But overall, the book was great and the illustrations though. 🥰

*I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

I came into this book not knowing Akif Kichloo or his work, and I was pleasantly surprised by a volume of haunting poetry, accompanied by a handful of beautiful, black and white illustrations. The drawings are truly as gorgeous as the verses, and they fully capture the spirit of “Falling Through Love”.

The book is divided into three sections, but a cohesive tone unifies the whole work. Each poem seemed to explore a different version of love —familiar love, romantic love, self-love, love for God, a god, some god— and its intricate relationship with the sadder, nastier emotions humans are capable of. It made me think of a Venn Diagram: Love and Grief, or Love and Anger, or Love and Something Else, and every poem took form right in the middle, where both things tangled into a jumbled amalgamation of feelings and thoughts, falling through and dragging the reader with. The product, overall, is powerful.

There were moments when I thought Kichloo was too clever for his own good. Some allegories were crafted with such care, the artifice became obvious. Like the trick reveled before the illusion, this thought cooled my enjoyment of some sections. This, however, was a minor, personal grip. Too-experimental pieces tend to lose me, but I know there’s a giant audience for them.

Fans of Kichloo will adore this collection, and newcomers like me will find plenty to like and ponder over. After all, perhaps poetry is just a “proper” name for the arrangements of words that make us feel. Kichloo achieves this with tantalizing ease.

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“I never see approval in my father’s aging face. And I write a poem.
I never spot peace in my mother’s beautiful eyes. And I write a poem.
My brother keeps forgetting my name. And. I write a poem.”

“All that scares me makes me lighter.
Will you float away with me? To a

town where the sun’s slow exile doesn’t
threaten our days. Where the counting of

hours is simply an exercise in futility.
Where wasting away years is the norm of

the place…”

"...there is this tender place
between something & everything.

now that's where I see myself.

someone's something
in the everything of their world."

-

I believe all books are voyages to new lands; poetry, in particular, becomes a window into the machinations of someone else’s heart. Kichloo’s culture —so different from mine, born in a tiny Caribbean island— was a joy to discover. I adored the bits of Arabic, Persian and other languages used throughout the book; that the words were sometimes explained and sometimes not. The chance to weight and consider our differences, to find our similarities are always heavier, is one of the reasons I love reading. I thank Kichloo for the opportunity.

“FALLING THROUGH LOVE” by Akif Kichloo

I have been trying to pick up more poetry books and am looking for one that would bring life to my love of poetry once again. I am so delighted that this indeed was such a beautiful collection that resonated with me with the powerful and beautiful words. The writing is truly magical and an experience in itself.
The collection is divided into three main parts all unified into its main theme about love and the way we experience this small word that means so much more to all of us.
I highly recommend this poetry collection as this will stay with you long after you read it and will definitely be going back to this read again and again.