Book Review: Bloom

by Beau Taplin

2018. 80 pages

Genre: Poetry

Final Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Summary:

A stunning collection of 140 short poems about growth and renewal from popular Australian poet Beau Taplin.

Beautifully designed with several pieces to a page, Bloom offers a unique twist on age-old topics: love, grief, and learning from them.

My Thoughts:

I have always enjoyed reading Beau Taplin‘s memes of poetry and inspiring messages on Facebook, so I thought it would be nice to buy one of his books. He has several out, which led me to the decision of using the Eeny, meeny, miny, moe method to pick which one I wanted. And so it was, I purchased Bloom.

I ate the passages in this book up like candy and even felt so inclined as to take pictures of some of the pages to send out to people that I thought would be able to relate to them. Taplin’s approach to love and grief is sincere, heartfelt and in many cases inspiring.

This book was so close to receiving a 5-star rating from me. The messages are beautifully written and meaningful, and I was able to relate on a personal level to so many of them. The only reason I couldn’t give this that full 5 is because it advertises itself as a poetry book, but some of these beautiful jewels don’t fall into the category of poetry so much as well-written inspirational quotes. Case in point:

Isolation

Be aware and understanding of all

people reguardless of thier standing

and circumstances. Even the most

priviledged life can be miserable and

isolating when the mind is sick.

We do not get to decide how

happy someone should feel by how

seemingly wonderful the world is

around them.

That’s a beautiful message, is it not? But I just can’t see how it qualifies as poetry. There are many more passages like that in Bloom, but there are also many that do in fact follow a more poetic formula and those are breathtaking. In all, I highly recommend giving this book a read and I will most definitely build my Taplin collection with his other publications.