I always find poetry the hardest to review. It's mainly because I don't specialize in writing poetry; I write stories. And when writing stories, you scatter pieces of your heart, your soul, yourself through your writing, hidden in pages you expose to the world. Poetry, I believe, goes one step further: pieces aren't enough. In a poem, you put all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your deepest and darkest thoughts and desires. All of you.

That's why poetry is hard to review. Crushing a poem feels like crushing the author, even more so than with a story. Thankfully, I won't have to do only crushing today.

'Catoptric tristesse' contains 38 poems (did I count that right?) I wish I could say 'on a variety of subjects', but this is not the case. The majority of the poems deal with romance, or specifically, the darker side of it: broken relationships, unrequited love. That's cool. There's nothing wrong with having a preference, and there was an effort to make the subjects more diverse. However, seeing as I read this in one go, it all got rather tedious after poem #16 on a broken romance.

I didn't see a whole lot of variation in the style either. From what I've learned, poetry is more than just rhyme. There are many different kinds of poetry, and it would be fun to see some more kinds explored! Gives a fresh twist to it, you know what I mean? The story sometimes made me feel as if I was reading the exact same poem over and over again, so it would be… refreshing to see something different.

I also thought the poems could need some more careful punctuation. With poetry, it's all in where you place the commas and periods. That's what sets the rhythm, makes it flow. The poems often lacked commas especially, making them hard to read. I couldn't really feel the rhythm that was supposed to be esrablished.

All in all, I did see some interesting takes, and I think that if the right person reads these poems, they'll be touched. I personally thought it was a tad edgy, a bit too much 'cookiecutter depressive poetry book written by a t

Wattpad teenager', but that works for some people. Different tastes, different entertainment. Even through the edginess, I could relate occasionally.

So yeah. Rough around the edges, but it could be something.

Rating: 6