Pleasefindthis

I Wrote This for You and Only You by Iain S Thomas is a haunting and beautiful collection of poetry paired with photography. I really enjoyed the poem ‘The Illusion of Things Never Changing’. It deeply resonated with my current spiritual and psychological states. Other favourites include 'The Mouth Moves but No Sound Comes Out’, 'The Things I Would Have Said’, 'The Story Can Be Neither Created or Destroyed’, and 'The Truth is Different Every Day’. The poem 'The Age at Which It show more Happens’ really swung a mallet upside my head. It hit so very close to home. It was during the run up to the disastrous 2016 election that I learned people I had thought would always be a part of my life had vastly different and incompatible values. As this poem says… these are people I'll never look at the same way again. We are no longer friends. And gods but that hurt. It still hurts today. To some part of me, it feels as if they've died. I was already a very mistrustful person, and now I find it even harder to trust people. Highly recommended for those who love poetry.

***Many thanks to the Netgalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for providing an egalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. show less

I guess there are many ways to read this book, or any other piece of writing by Iain S. Thomas. If you want to ruin the simple pleasure of reading words and poems that are easy to relate to and take into your own world, you can see it all as a very smart marketing strategy. The way he consciously write so that it can reach as many as possible and so that as many as possible can relate and say "that's about me!". But I also think Iain has and is creating something beautiful in the way he's show more making poetry accessible for the bigger audience, not just for literature-people. It doesn't have to be super deep with complicated words. He's taking 'writing' back to telling stories the simple way, speaking in a language we all understand.
What I loved the most about this book was that since all the writings are left quite open without clear endings, they are perfect for writing-inspiration. I always found myself "finishing" the short little story he had started and it's just great small flash-fiction pieces to throw you into the start of your own writing.

I'm very aware of the fact that Iain is a genius when it comes to marketing, but when I read this book I still forgot about it and could definitely lose myself in the simple beauty of words.

- [a:Charlotte Eriksson|7056690|Charlotte Eriksson|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1367998964p2/7056690.jpg] author of [b:Empty Roads & Broken Bottles; in search for The Great Perhaps|17829704|Empty Roads & Broken Bottles; in search for The Great Perhaps|Charlotte Eriksson|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1366309457s/17829704.jpg|24944198]
[bc:Empty Roads & Broken Bottles; in search for The Great Perhaps|17829704|Empty Roads & Broken Bottles; in search for The Great Perhaps|Charlotte Eriksson|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1366309457s/17829704.jpg|24944198] show less

These poems ~ observations ~ thoughts ~ short essays ~ fables are just the kind of thing I love. I fell in love with Stephen Crane's poetry for the same reason: it packs a punch in as few words as possible, leaving me with something to contemplate for hours. What a gift - to share and to receive.

It’s when you hold eye contact for that second too long or maybe the way you laugh. It sets off a flash and our memories take a picture of who we are at that point when we first know 'This is love.'

And we clutch that picture to our hearts because we expect each other to always be the people in that picture. But people change. People aren’t pictures. And you can either take a new picture or throw the old one away.

Some of the poems here are the stuff of eye-roll-inducing Facebook memes. show more But some of them are highly affecting. show less