Title: With Love: As love is
Author: G. Bradley
Publisher: Balboa Press
ISBN: 1982234504
Genre: Poetry
Pages: 340
Reviewed by: Allison Walker
Pacific Book Review
With Love: As love is, written by G. Bradley, is a collection of essays, poems and thoughts about the kindness people give each other, observing and growing in love, and God’s love for all of creation. Bradley writes while he was well-loved growing up, the words “I love you” were rarely used by his family. As he grew older, Bradley recalls, and especially with the support of a loving romantic partner, he gradually learned to say these words. With Love: As love is is a mediation of his journey becoming comfortable with saying these three, very powerful words.
Through reading his essays, a person experiences the sense of growth and discovery Bradley did. For example, one poem reads, “I am a seed that becomes a tree/ I am a personality that knows love.” Bradley’s experience of love grows in the same way as that seed matures to become a tree, and the reader becomes witness to it all. The entire collection is not only poetry. With Love also contains essays and even simple thoughts: some of the poems are only one line. Bradley is thought-provoking without being philosophical. His pieces eschew references to scholars and focus on his observations and experiences. Bradley writes, “I am not attempting to be profound. I am attempting to simplify a subject that we have a tendency to complicate.” Likewise, his essays are not stories. They maintain a somewhat neutral voice any reader can inject themselves into.
Perhaps because the only theme of the collection is love, the word itself is indecently overused. For example, one of his essays reads, “Love is in us from birth on. Love is a part of our nature. This is why we can feel love.” As the paragraph continues, there is only one sentence which does not include at least one instance of the word “love.” The ever-present insistence upon this single word seems to suggest a struggle to express the depth of the author’s emotion. Considering Bradley recollects not being encouraged to verbally express this emotion as a child, it’s not surprising to read about a depth of emotion that literally explodes and reiterates across the pages of his book.
Bradley’s free-writing essay form, almost train-of-thought, carries his readers through a spectrum of expression and encourages them to grow in their own journey with love. While his essays are long, thought-provoking pieces, Bradley’s poetry could not be more different. Each poem is a snippet, easily digestible but equally expressive. No matter how much time you have, whether a minute to be inspired or an hour to ruminate, flip through the pages of With Love and you will find an essay or poem to fall in love with.
