"Red Corner"

Red Corner by Dawn Web

Goodreads Giveaway Win

Pages: 234 Genre: poetry

Rating: 3.5 Star

Red Corner is a poetry book about the author's experiences navigating love, sexuality, politics, perseverance, trauma, and more.

I won this book in a Goodreads Giveaway. I will say that reading the Kindle version/formatting is a bit of a pain, but that has no relevance to my rating/review. Just something to keep in mind if you're about to download it yourself!

I consider myself a very casual poetry enjoyer. I think poetry is a work of art that I'm not very well-versed in, and as a result I'm not as confident reviewing a poetry book as I would be a whole narrative book. So, with full awareness of that, I did enjoy this collection of poems.

In particular, there were a lot of poems (particularly at the beginning) that played with words and how they sound/look, which I really enjoyed and thought was an effective writing technique. And there were many poems throughout that struck a cord with me.

Unfortunately, there were sometimes where it felt less like poetry written with intention and style and more like a sentence arbitrarily broken up across a few lines. This style of writing can have its moments, but in general I don't really vibe with it. However, in a book that has this many poems, a few of this style doesn't ruin the experience.

When poetry is so nonfictional, as this book is, I always like the glimpse into the author's brain. I imagine that those who have a more personal connection to these experiences will ultimately get more out of it (there were certainly some poems that my Anxiety Brain latched onto). Overall, though, it was a touching story of resilience, and I admire the author sharing it.