Title: Ocean

Author: Anastasia Lindsey

Genre: Poetry

 

In Ocean, Anastasia Lindsey shares an extensive collection of poems that she has composed over many years. Through her poetic voice, she shares her experiences throughout various points of her life and the emotions she felt. She uses the ocean as a metaphor for her experiences, and many of her poems express related elements.

Poetry is a highly personal written art form. In it, the poet often employs creative language and imagery to convey what they wish to share with their reader. Anastasia Lindsey’s technique is straightforward and clean. The language is easy for the reader to understand and connect with. She does not need to resort to forced rhyming schemes or meter; rather, her free-voice poetry form throughout the collection transitions smoothly from one page to the next.

Her writing is not bogged down with punctuation at the end of lines, nor does she even use capitalization at the beginning of each line. Although this choice may strike some readers as off-putting because she does not follow conventional grammar rules, for poetry, the rules are often meant to be broken. The reader is therefore not distracted by anything, and the words stand out more. This is true both physically when simply looking at the page, but also as the reader absorbs the context.

Anastasia Lindsey writes in such a way that she breaks wide open her heart and soul. Her experiences are vast and therefore relatable. Any reader will no doubt connect with at least one of her poems. Many know the challenge of loving oneself or of seeing what others see in the self. Millions go through the floating, ethereal bliss of falling in love and marveling that someone else could love in return, but then there is the heartbreaking flip side of shattered dreams and lost love.

Lindsey evokes transcendent emotion of what it means to adore another as she writes about simply lying in bed and watching her husband sleep as the morning light gently spills across his form. It is in the blessed every day that we often find ourselves stopping at times and wondering at life, expressing gratitude, and pondering the meaning of it all. In the simple, so is the complex.

Lindsey’s language may be easy to grasp, but she also employs metaphors, often invoking the ocean and its related elements, such as waves, its depth, a starlit sky above, a sunset or sunrise over the waters, the beach, or the breeze. She wastes not a word in showing the reader how her life’s experiences can reach as wide or as deep as the ocean, and thus, she peppers her poetry with short self-reflections or meditations that the reader can use to also experience the same feeling of width and depth.

There are some misplaced commas and a few misspellings, but they do not detract from the overall positive effect.

In Ocean, readers looking to immerse themselves in the depth of all life has to offer will find a lifeline to grab onto. Anastasia Lindsey is a seasoned poet who knows how to mix simple language with metaphor to evoke an emotional reaction in her reader. Lovers of poetry will not want to miss a dive into Ocean.

 

 

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