Love Lessons

I got this as an arc on Netgalley and it will come out in November. I read this beautiful collection of poetry written by a Lesbian elder in one breath. Very curious about next year's expected quasi memoir.

Capek's short collection spans decades. Love - in many shapes - appears for the readers through pieces about family, loss, and the classic yearning. I liked the connection of the kaleidoscope in the middle of the works as a vivid image that acts as a way to view your life.

This feels like listening to favorite "cool aunt" talk about her trials and triumphs. You feel as though you are in community with Capek simply by reading.

3.5/5 stars

I enjoyed this autobiographical collection of poems summarizing Mary Ellen's life experiences. Her poems about queer love struck me the most as a young queer woman who still feels a bit out of place in the world, but I also enjoyed several of her other poems as well, including "All My Relations" and "Stepson." As someone who has found writing poetry to be quite difficult and not my typical forte, I am always in awe of the poetry collections I do read, and I think Mary Ellen had good command of words and successfully invoked strong human emotion in nearly all of her poems.

Thank you Netgalley for allow me to read this short poems. This book was short under 50 pages and each section has a topic of poems. It was a easy to read and nice.
#LoveLessons #NetGalley.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately I do not believe Love Lessons was for me -- some of the writing simply did not click, while others were a little disjointed in a way that made it hard for me to follow.

However, one poem I did quite like was Stepson. It was rather sweet and loving, and touched on a form of parenthood that feels very yearning: close, but tied with ribbon instead of sinew. Something that, in writing, feels like it could break.

Overall I wouldn't say this was my favorite poem collection ever, however Mary Ellen has written something that creates a connection to the reader.

Love Lessons: Poems 1973-2023 by Mary Ellen Capek is a great collection of poetry that handles a lot of different topics from familial love to other types of love. It was a very short and enjoyable read, and brought up a lot of different perspectives that I enjoyed hearing from. I will say, I typically steer clear of poetry because I don’t feel I understand it enough to get as much out of it as I could, but I still enjoyed this collection.

The one poem that really stood out to me was actually the last one, Asylum. This poem talks about the history of our country and how a lot of our inventions and ways of life originated in the native tribes of Central and South America. It then goes into the way the descendents of our ancestors are being treated at the border, but in a really beautiful and thought provoking way. I was moved by this poem in particular and felt it was thoughtful and important

Overall, I would give this poetry collection 3/5 stars. I enjoyed it and felt it told a lot of important stories. I would recommend it to any poetry lovers.

This collection was beautifully written. However, I will admit not all of the poems were for me. I found myself unable to relate to more of them than I did. However, Capek's writing manages to transcend her readers right into the moments she was writing about something a lot of poetry seems to lack as of late.

I enjoyed Mary Ellens Pomes, they were thoughtfully written, to enjoy a book of pomes I feel like you have to be in the correct environment. I cozied up at a coffee shop and broke open this thoughtfully put together book. each pome was enjoyable and I liked how the book was put together.

I enjoyed the tone of this as there was a quiet strumming throughout this collection. There were a few moments where some of the wording really stood out, and the recollections were interesting to read. I liked the inner dialogue throughout most of the poems but I felt wanting more of a punch to round out the ends of most of these that somehow that threw the pacing off for me.

Great collection, mind you, and the author kept that tone well enough throughout. But I wished there was a shift at one point, or some sort of heightened adrenaline to keep me turning page after page, but that was really mild instead.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this collection. All opinions are my own.

I usually don’t foray collections such as this, but Mary Ellen Capek in Love Lessons might just have changed my mind on the essence of love poems. What a life altering read.