Review- Where Souls Grow Warm by Laura Lee

About Where Souls Grow Warm by Laura Lee (in the author's own words):

After finishing  a long, difficult novel, I always enter a phase of poetry.”-Joyce Carol Oates

Back in 1996, I published my first collection of poetry, Invited to Sound.   It was a mix of poems generally on the themes of meditation and unrequited love.

Since then, between books and when inspiration struck, I have written poems and tucked them away.

Now that e-publishing is a reality, I’ve decided to compile a collection of poems from my files.  I’m calling it “Where Souls Grow Warm.”  It is a reference to the honest poetry that people write without thinking about it when they speak from the heart.

The poems in the collection span a 17-year period of my life, including some from the print only Invited to Sound.  Because of this, it is much broader in scope and theme.  My Eastern influence and poems of unrequited love are there, there is also some nostalgia, observations of things that exist outside my skull, some further musings on God, mature love, absurdity and some love songs to dead poets.

REVIEW:

I loved reading Laura Lee's Angel (my review of which can be read here). It was an enlightening and splendid read and Laura Lee's writing was captivating, charming and had a poetic flow to it. 
I felt extremely surprised and esteemed when author Laura Lee informed me about Where Souls Grow Warm, her self-published collection of poetry. I like reading poetry simply because it is easy to read but difficult to understand. There is a certain kind of profoundness and bottomlessness that comes with poetry and although hard to figure things out, everything just flows and sits in place. 
The poems in Where Souls Grow Warm are beautiful. Each and every poem had depth to it but was easy to comprehend because it is nothing but honest observations made by the author that are easily relatable and understandable. Two poems that I really loved were Literary Appreciation and Identity. 
It is really challenging for me to review Where Souls Grow Warm because I am finding it hard to express the sheer beauty of all of Laura Lee's poems. 
I will share two of the most precious and beautiful lines from the poems titled  Pondering My Poetic and Married respectively. 

my prison of loneliness 
built of my own guilt stones 
I have raided myself in captivity 
pondering my prison 

Give me you hand 
tell me I'm wrong 
beg me to stay 
take me along 
who would have thought 
this day would come 
the dream would remain 
you would be gone? 

The poems in Where Souls Grow Warm made me realise that all of us have similar experiences in life, but only the few talented ones can actually describe it in the form of poetry and make it look uncomplicated when in reality, it isn't so. I am so elated that author Laura Lee went ahead and published her personal poetry collection. Her writing is really heavenly and lovely. 
The introduction at the beginning of the collection is simply stunning. It is always such a pleasure to get to know authors that you truly admire and look up to, on a more personal level. 
In conclusion, Where Souls Grow Warm is a truly moving, wonderful and awe-inspiring set of poetry. 

RATING:

Sarika