Title: Musical Thoughts: A Poetry to Ponder About
Author: Amy K. Kalsi
Publisher: PageTurner, Press and Media
ISBN: 1643764306
Genre: Poetry
Pages: 50
Reviewed by: Beth Adams

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Most often, the true talent of a poet is shown when they break down into simple parts the emotions, feelings and desires people have in life, and of course bring it to a foot, beat and rhyme in prose. Author and poet Amy K. Kalsi has done a remarkable reveal of expression, along with fantastic artfully drawn illustrations, in her collection titled Musical Thoughts: A Poetry to Ponder About.

Her subjects are sensitive, yet given the young age of the author it is apparent how she keeps at arm’s length any divulgence into carnal thoughts and desires. Yet that said, she is well beyond the simplicity of childhood poetry, as well as showing a mature respect for God and the values of good deeds in life. She shows some redundancy with her choice of rhyming words between various poems, yet she keeps each short and to the point. Her artwork is amazing, and her layout is very creative.

In her poem titled, “Cheaters,” I particularly liked the lines, “But when the time comes to test goodness, Men come to know they have no true friends. They (men) are betrayed, and cheated often. Their happiness rests in cemetery in a coffin.” In another poem she writes about how happy she was to achieve a good test grade, after doing a lot of worrying about it. In that poem, she learned the lesson, “That experience taught me about being happy for small things, And not being sad and teary about tiny things.” I thought to myself many people stop at the “small stuff” but Amy went onto the “tiny things.”

Reading this book, I was captivated to learn about the young age in which Amy K. Kalsi actually wrote her poems, as she did many of them in her upper single-digit years and low teens. Of course, the illustrations immediately caught my eye and realized how deeply inspired she was in her enjoyment of conveying her messages. The appeal of her work would be an ideal book for other young adults to assimilate as the vernacular is simple and unpretentious, the prose is honest and polite, and her illustrations are, in some cases, hypnotizingly intricate with her faces and doodling. Altogether, Musical Thoughts: A Poetry to Ponder About sets a high-bar in quality, maturity beyond her years, and talent to entertain. This reviewer hopes to read much more from this aspiring and talented writer in the future!