Title: The Letters from Salomee
Author: Karen Lee Oliver
Publisher: Writers Branding LLC
ISBN: 9781639456673
Pages: 716
Genre: Poetry
Reviewed by: Jack Chambers
Pacific Book Review
If there were to be one desire most of humanity had for itself, it would be to find peace. Peace, or tranquility to some, can have many different meanings to different people. There are some who find peace in simple lives in the countryside, surrounded by their families. For others, tranquility comes from the fulfillment of their life’s work, and the expression of their dreams made reality. The difficult part of finding tranquility as a whole is accepting one person’s peace will most likely be far different than another person. Being able to find our voice and express tranquility is an important part of life.
In author and poet Karen Lee Oliver’s The Letters from Salomee, the author explores the concept of tranquility through the arts of dance and poetry. Bringing an almost dance-like quality of expression to these poems based on the author’s long career in the world of dance, the collection pulls from the several books the author has published previously, taking poems which hone in on memories, life, death, and the pursuit of total peace altogether. Through these philosophical discussions through poetry, the author hopes to share insights into what true tranquility looks like.
The author does such an incredible job of crafting poetry that would challenge the readers and get the readers asking questions about their own lives. The ways in which concepts of good and evil are explored through memories and dreams was such a unique concept to find in the first book in this collection, and kept me invested in the overarching themes the poems were exploring. The imagery and movement that each poem seemed to capture really spoke to the elements of dance that the author’s work brought to mind as the collection progressed, and the rich flow of the poems allowed the collection to move at an even pace, giving readers the time to explore these concepts for themselves.
This is the perfect book for those who enjoy poetry, especially those who enjoy poems that come in large collections and speak on philosophical themes such as good and evil, life and death, and everything in between. The thing which always sticks out in a good book of poems is the reader’s desire to return to the book time and time again, and the large volume of poems this entire collection houses and the deep emotional and mental impact that these poems have on the reader leaves no doubt that the reader will be drawn back into this book time and time again.
Memorable, thoughtful, and enlightening, author Karen Lee Oliver’s The Letters from Salomee is a must-read poetry collection. The heart and passion for which the author wrote these poems, and the inspiring freestyle of the poems themselves showcased the authors ability to take a memory, a stream of consciousness, or even an idea or dream, and turn it into a thought-provoking poem which touches upon the human experience as a whole, makes this a compelling collection readers won’t want to miss out on.
