Cover of “Rustlings Of The Spirit” by Chloe Gentile-MontgomeryI’m back with another book review, and this time I’m reviewing the poetry chapbook “Rustlings Of The Spirit” by Chloe Gentile Montgomery! It’s been a while since I read any poetry collections and reviewed them, so I thought it would be fun to read this one. Here’s a quick summary so we know what it’s about:
“Rustlings of the Spirit, a refreshing addition to modern poetry, is divided into four chapters; “Loss”, “Rightful Rage”, “Reconnection”, and “Love” wherein the author explores her journey towards radical acceptance through grief. In her debut poetry chapbook, Chloe Gentile-Montgomery takes readers through a range of emotions in each chapter, allowing them to feel deeply, with an emphasis on self-love and radical acceptance of one’s progress. Rustlings of the Spirit reminds readers that they are not alone in their suffering and that healing is not as picture-perfect as it’s sometimes made out to be.”
Content Warning:
Some of the poems do contain discussions of police violence and death. If you are sensitive to such content, please be careful when reading this collection.
Overall Thoughts:
This collection was shorter than I expected. I know it’s a chapbook, but I still kind of wish there were one or two more poems in sections “Reconnection” and “Loss.” However, the poems within this whole chapbook were nice to read overall. All of them fall into the free verse type of poetry, though some of them do have some rhyming going on, especially in the first section of the chapbook. I noticed that there were one or two instances of misspelling, such as “cop” being misspelled as “kop,” but it didn’t jar me from reading the collection as a whole.
The author played around a lot with the spacing of lines in many of the poems. However, the ones I enjoyed reading the most were the poems that didn’t have so much variety in line spacing, such as “Growing.” They had some very nice imagery, often leaning towards having more nature imagery than anything else.
Despite my enjoyment of some poems more than others, however, I did not really read any standout poems that resonated with me much. Many of the poems were also quite short, which is fine, but I would’ve liked to read more longer poems. Some poems, such as “Wounded” and “The Ocean,” felt like they had more to say than what was written.
Overall, I’m rating this book 3.5 out of 5 stars!
This is a nice debut poetry chapbook to read, and I recommend it for anyone who wants a short and easy read. However, I would advise readers to heed the content warnings I listed earlier in this review just in case.
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