The Universe of Us

It has been a while since I sat and read through a book of poetry and I was immediately interested in this one upon seeing it on Netgalley. I really enjoyed this: the whole collection was so emotive and sincere. I loved nearly all of the poems, and even the ones I didn't still stayed in my mind because each of them had so much feeling in every line.

I'll definitely be buying a hard copy at some point so that I can bookmark my multiple favourites and go back to them. Overall, a really wonderful and heartfelt collection.

We, as humans, have all romanticized the universe. Sun, moon, stars, Jupiter and the space. Lang Leav has revisited the romanticism clung to the universe in her new collection. She has explored the joy of love, the sorrow of loneliness, the vacuum of losing the ones you love; in all different forms.
There are some, just lines, that make you delve into them like everything in the world can wait.

Lang Leav is the best-selling author of Love & Misadventure, Lullabies, and Memories. I've read them all a while ago and I remember the feeling they awakened in me. It's the same I get now from "The Universe of Us". I really, really like the way she talks about love.

"He and I collided like two predestined stars and in that brief moment I felt what it was like to be immortal."

It is hard to write poetry without it sounding like the same. Throughout this book the voice was consistent but there was emotion to each poem and that is what I look for and that is why I recommend it to people.

Lang's poetry just speaks to me and always blows my mind. I'm not an amazingly big lover of poetry but when I read hers I feel like I'm reading quotes about my own life.

Having very recently been introduced to Lang Leav's writings, I was very excited when I learned of this new collection of poetry.

I've never written a review on a book of poetry before, but the understanding that the overall concept of the book, besides love, is about the universe: stars, space, planets, etc. made it easier to kind of ground me in the reading. Kind of taking a step back, I felt an overall sense of vastness and omnipotence to many of the entries in the book. In that sense, I liked the idea of these higher powers, so to speak, going through the trials and tribulations of finding love.

Concerning Lang Leav's writing in general, I'm so impressed with the way she structures her poems. How sometimes she conveys an entire story's worth of feelings - whether happiness sadness, longing, etc - into a simple sentence or phrase. Her poems are beautiful, and The Universe of Us gives readers more of the exquisite beauty or sadness of falling in (or out) of love. I think the subject matter is really accessible to anyone. It's not even necessarily romantic love either, each poem is written in such a way that the context can be judged by the reader.

I really adored this collection of poems. Highly recommended and so easy to just pick this up and read a few poems here and there instead of all in one sitting.

I think this is the fastest that I've read any Poetry book. Having first read this wonderful writer's work on Instagram , I was in love with her right away. Though I already have two of the three printed already , I've just read a few pages of both and this is the first one that I've completed. Coming with a really beautiful cover, with an illustration by Lang Leav herself , "The universe of us" comprises of poems on different aspects of love -love , breakups, heartbreak , eternal love! All of it... The thing I like most about this book is the fact that unlike a lot of poetry it isn't difficult to understand. It's written in a simple , easy to understand manner which makes it quick to understand and very very relatable. By that I do not mean it lacks depth , it has a lot of layers , a lot of emotions well woven into these well written lines , but on the onset it doesn't intimidate a reader as most poetry can.
This is the newest book by her and I really recommend it for poetry lovers and for readers who are apprehensive of reading something very complicated , for this is simple and touches your heart just the same😀❣
"I don't want to be the one who tucks you into bed -I want to be the reason why you can't sleep at night..."

full review on www.merakipost.com soon :)

The Universe of Us by Lang Lev is the poet's fourth collection of poetry. Lang is a recipient of The Qantas Spirit of Youth Award and was later granted a coveted Churchill Fellowship. Her fashion label Akina has achieved critical and commercial success, stocked in key boutiques around Australia and later in cutting edge Harajuku, Japan.

I would have passed this collection by, but her mention in her partner's, Michael Faudet, book Pretty Dirty Things intrigued me. If Leav was the influence to Faudet's writing, it must be worthwhile to read. Leav manages to treat love without becoming sappy about it. Her poems, for the most part, are very short almost like song lyric clippings. It is easy to see how her work can become best-selling poetry. Not to slight her work, but it does seem to hold that bubblegum pop quality of catching a moment and exploiting it.

Although as a middle aged male, I am probably not the target audience for Leav's writing. I can appreciate the subject matter and did enjoy the cosmological references. It was the odd poem out that attracted my attention. "A Lesson" seemed to be more about the loss of a person, as in suicide rather than a loss of a love. I can see how this collection appeals to a large and not normally poetry reading audience. Although this collection is not my preferred poetry, anything that encourages people to read more poetry is a very good thing.

This was my first time reading Lang's poetry, though I've wanted to read her other books for a while so I went into this reading complete fresh and without any already decided opinion due to past experiences. There have only been two books of poetry that I've read this year that were actually poetry and followed the expected rules of poetry. This is one of these books.

I really enjoyed this. Yes, I'm a bit bitter with half of it because I'm not in love and it makes me miss that love. But luckily, there were poems for us bitter in here as well. There's love that used to be, love that is long distance, love that lasts after break ups and change into a new love, those he desperately want love, those who dream of love only to wake up to realize it wasn't real (yup, that one hit me hard because that was the one I've had a lot lately). The poems were well written, weren't made vulgar for no reason other than can. It flowed and was musical. It was rough when needed, but you looked at it and it was poetry. It was nice to read some after reading a lot of bad poetry this year. I wanted to take pictures of some of the poems to send to people. One was about talking like they once did, something I wish with one of my ex's so bad now that we don't talk as often as we used to. Just to talk forever and ever like once did.

Not all the poems were perfect. There were a handful that my eyes glazed over a bit. I had to take breaks, come back. But I supposed that does happen with some poetry.

I hope I get a chance to read this once again when I do find love once more. As one of the poems said, after being so long without love, you wonder if you can love again. Well, it's been a while for me so my brain and heart are trying to grasp what that's like again after eight years of none.

I didn't know Lang Leav until today. Shame on me.

I've always hated poetry with a passion. School did that to me. It made me think poetry is just a bunch of boring words put together to torment me. The poets I had to study (with the exception of George Bacovia) used complicated words to say nonsense. I've always thought of them as some sadistic bastards who composed on their toilets for the sole purpose of tormenting children during their classes. Just miles of verses you had to memorize not to get a bad grade. And when I finished high school, on my final oral exam, what do you think I got? Poetry, of course. But there's always a silver lining, and the poet was Bacovia. Not only did I know to analyze his work, but I knew some poems by heart. Good thing his depressing work spoke to my teenage-self.

But enough of my tormented past. This year I decided on a whim to give poetry another chance. I thought that if nobody made me read it, it would be more enjoyable. So I started the year with the Bronte sisters, and now I found this precious gem on NetGalley.

Wow! Not only did I like it, I loved it! No poem ever made me shed tears. A Lesson made me cry like a baby.

A Lesson

There is a girl who smiles all the time,
to show the world that she is fine.

A boy who surrounds himself with friends,
wishes that his life would end.

For those that say they never knew-
the saddest leave the least of clues.

This is beautiful and heartbreaking. Even if there are just a few lines, Leav describes the pain and suffering to such an extent, that I'm left wondering how does she know what's it like? How can she make a poem out of it? How can that poem touch my soul? It makes me think of her as a kindred spirit, or a person of such empathy that she understands the torment of those around her.

But don't be fooled. The Universe of Us is far from a depressing compilation. Her poems talk about loosing, yes, but also about hope and love, and finding your inner strength (unfortunately I'm more attuned to her sadder works). And I don't have the right words to review Leav's work properly. I hope that someone a lot smarter than me will come along and do her justice.

Anyway, go read The Universe of Us. Let your soul bask in Leav's sunshine. It will be worth your time.

As a parting note:

Your Words

Remember, your words are your power. Never forget your words.

I really enjoy reading poetry, especially from contemporary artists with a more open mind to structure. So far I have read every book by Leav and although everyone seems to love her work, it just didn't click. For her poetry, Leav uses a very strict ryhme scheme (A-B-A-B) with short sentences - that poems are sickly sweet, like covered in honey. Thankfully, in The Universe of Us she concentrates more on her prose work, which is such a good decision!

Despite the announced "celestial theme" make no mistake: Leavs leitmotiv is always love and all its variations and she once again dives into it. Her pieces often read as if speaking to the reader, there are paragraphs spiraling an entire page in contrast to one sentence pieces and the occasional poem thrown in. Leavs prose manages to do what her poems couldn't so far: they resonate with me, touch me. A physical copy would be covered with tabs to mark important bits (I actually believe I will need to get a copy as soon as the book is officially out). Would I like for her to explore other themes? Yeah. Still, love and loss and longing finally work really well in the prose pieces.

The cover art is as lovely as always with Leavs books, although I'd love to see far more illustrations by her inside. I also have a bit mixed feelings about the page layout and count... only every second page gets print on it. Poetry books always have sort of a different layout inside and are generally more expensive but it still feels like blowing up the body of work just because.

The Universe of Us by Lang Leav is a collection of poems about what is like to be in love with someone, about breakups and all the things you feel when you love. First of all, I do not read a lot of poetry but once I started the book, I couldn’t put it down. Leav’s writing is simple but lovely at the same time; it’s easy to understand what she wants to say and what she wants the reader to feel. Maybe that why I loved the poems so much because it’s was easy and anyone can relate to what she is saying; we all have been once in one of these situations where we have to breakup with someone or we love someone that doesn’t love us back. I recommend this poetry book to everyone even if you are not a big fan of poetry in general.

THE UNIVERSE OF US is Lang Leav's fourth collection of poetry & probably my favourite. While I typically don’t read that much poetry I’ve actually been reading quite a bit this year and when I saw that this collection was available on NetGalley I jumped at the chance to read it (as I had read and enjoyed two of her other collections perviously this year).

It seems as if the more poetry that I read by Lang Leav, the more that I enjoy her work. While her poetry is not for everyone - as these poems do not resemble what many may think poetry should be; there are short one line sentences, poems with numerous line breaks, and poems with full sentences and punctuation making it resemble more of a prose form - it has seemed to touch a cord with me. As I was reading this collection on my phone, I took screenshots of at least a third to a half of the poems in this collection so I could go back and read them again.

This is a book that I want to have in my own poetry collection once it comes out in October and I would definitely recommend THE UNIVERSE OF US as well as Lang Leav's other books to anyone who is on the lookout for some more great poetry to read.

The Universe of Us is Lang Leav’s fourth book, and though her style (and others like her) dramatically divides opinion, I love it. Just as with Michael Faudet’s Dirty Pretty Things, there’s something about the way the words are put together that make me melt, that make my heart soar; I can’t say exactly what it is, there’s just something magical to me about this style of poetry and the mixture of reality and whimsy that influences it.

'I would blanket the world in utter darkness; I would pull back the veil of light and reveal to you a blinding crescendo of stars.

I would drain all the seven seas and ask you to count – one by one – every grain of sand that clings to the ocean floor.'

Leav’s newest collection of poetry is influenced by planets, stars, and constellations, so naturally I couldn’t resist reading it. Those themes definitely feature within this collection, though not as often as I expected or would have liked – I found love, relationships, and heartbreak to be the overwhelming theme which didn’t surprise me at all. As with Leav’s other poetry, though, I loved it for the most part. I just adore the way she writes, even though it is often in a very simple way – there are words that resonate with you for unknown reasons and Leav’s poetry overflows with those words for me.

'I’ve never met you before, but I recognize this feeling.'

I love how subjective and personal poetry is, both to the writer and the reader; I think that’s why poems can resonate so deeply within us. I’ve included extracts from some of my favourites in my review but that doesn’t mean that I found every poem wonderful. In fact, I find that I disliked (or didn’t love) a lot of the poems in which Leav used rhyme, which for some is the hallmark of good poetry. I much prefer her writing when it doesn’t use rhyme, rather a sense of rhythm that develops naturally from the subtle beauty of her words and the topics that she uses them for.

'She belongs to no one, to nothing, to nowhere. When you met her you will recognize her for who she is – a free spirit, a wandering star.'

Not everyone will like this style of poetry, and the world would be so boring if everyone did. But I urge any lover of words to try Leav’s work if you haven’t before. You never know, you might just find yourself in love with it.

I really enjoyed The Universe of Us. I’ve not read anything by this poet before. In a similar style to other collections published by this publisher, this contains short poems and short prose pieces that explore the universal theme of love. Leav uses simple but beautiful language to explore the start, gradual disintegration and end of a young love affair. I could completely relate to what the poems beautifully conveyed. I remember the intensity of my first real love affair. I wrote hundreds of poems about it. Eleven years later I still write about it even though I’ve been in a relationship with someone else for almost as long as it’s been since I ended the relationship. It may be ironic but true – you never forget your first love. It stays with you forever. First love whether it lasts for years or ends in heartache has a special kind of magic Leav captures beautifully. The only thing I didn’t really like was the cover – I thought it was cheesy and didn’t do the contents justice. The Universe of Us has introduced me to a new poet I look forward to reading more of.

You won't believe how excited I was when I saw this on Netgalley. After reading Leav's Love & Misadventure, I fell in love with her poetry and this collection was even better. Her poetry is extremely accessible and I just had to mark every single poem I related to which was quite a lot. After some of these poems I was quite an emotional mess which I can only infinitely praise Lang Leav for. She has a remarkable way with words. These poems mostly aren't abstract, you know what she's trying to say and it suddenly hits you in the feelings and you start to think about that one person you had eye contact with on the train 2 years ago and it will wreck you.

I read Lang Leav's other poetry bundle Memories last year and I enjoyed her writing style; this new collection The Universe Of Us was in my opinion even better. It might just be because it was a lot easier to connect to the love-inspired poetry, but what I can say is that I now have a lot of highlights with beautiful quotes stored on my phone. The poetry is beautifully written and both easy to read and easy to relate to. And yes, that is the case even if you're not an hopeless romantic... Trust me, I'm talking out of experience. If you are looking for a great contemporary romance poetry collection, make sure you give The Universe Of Us a go. You won't regret it.

Lang Leav is wonderful at what she does. Her poems are relatable, wonderfully written and this is simply another great example of what a poetry book should be.

I received an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I find this better than Lullabies. Lang Leav's love poems are fascinating and beautifully written. Most of it are emotionally stirring and heartfelt. I must admit some of them are repetitive and a little boring. It's still a great go-to read.

This is my first reading in poetry. I mean, sure, we had poetry for lit class in school, but post that I never really read any poetry. Until, one of my friends recommended Lang Leav to me. He was full of praises and begged me to read any of her works because she’s just so good. And, because I trust his judgement a whole lot, I decided to give it a go.

Boy, am I glad that I did! I absolutely loved it! The absolute gorgeousness with which Lang captures emotions and plays with words is amazing. Every poem is a story of its own and it baffles me that she can convey in a few lines what many can’t convey through entire books. She’s really gifted.

I absolutely adored all the poems. They were so beautiful. Happy, sad, heartwarming and heartbreaking all packaged in this one beautiful book for the world to read and experience love. *sighs*

It’s really, really beautiful. I mean, I’m running out of words now. Beautiful, gorgeous, ethereal, transcending and whatever other adjective you want to use. This was beautiful. I’m glad I decided to pick this up. I know I’m going to read all of her work ASAP and I know that I’m going to be just as blown away by them as I am with this!

If you haven’t read her poetry. You’re missing out. Lots. Please pick up one of her collections ASAP! You’ll be thanking me.

Lang Leav's works are like a love letter and stories between her and Michael Faudet that outsiders get to read like voyeurs.

Lang Leav does is again with another beautiful and spellbinding master piece.