Eyes of the Girl: A Look into Her World
by Nyrak

Eyes of the Girl is a collection of poetry by a promising new poet and author writing under the pen name of Nyrak that is soon-to-be-published. The majority of the poems found in this collection will strike an immediate chord with any adolescent trying to survive their teenage years. At the same time however, I felt that a good deal of the poems in this collection held a message that will touch anyone who has ever found themselves standing on a street corner, the middle of a hallway, or half-way up the stairs and wondering what it is they should be doing and why.

Reading this collection made me think back to my own angst-ridden teenage years, and strangely enough, by the time I had finished this collection I found myself feeling as though I owed my mother a huge hug, kiss, and thank-you for raising me as she did.

The collection of poetry covers topics from family troubles, relationships, to just everyday life. One poem in particular that I found myself taking a shine to is entitled “What Happens Next?”. I believe anyone who has ever gone through a real relationship will be able to relate to and understand the feelings expressed in this piece, because hey, we’ve been there too:

…I didn’t want this
to happen and now
I am riddled with guilt
I don’t understand.

You claim to love me
and yet I can’t imagine
how that’s true.

Baby I’m tired of waiting for you…

While I enjoyed the raw emotion and feeling behind each piece, I highly suspect that this is going to be a work that is not suited for everyone. If you like your poetry to be strict and follow exact specifications I sincerely doubt that you will find much enjoyment in these pieces. Each piece had a rough quality to it that, in my opinion, helped to shape the poetry and give it its own signature style. However, there were a few pieces that I felt were a little too rough and could have been made all the more powerful if the author had sacrificed a little of her creative freedom and followed a more formal form.

For example, the poem entitled “Goodbye”, has a flowing and tumbling feel to it that initially suits the poem in the first handful of stanzas, but as you read on that “flowing and tumbling” feel changes into a “choppy and abrupt” sensation that ultimately waters down the emotion and message behind the words. In particular, the last stanza of this poem reminds me of sitting at my great grandmother’s feet as she told old folktales in Spanish. The stories were riveting and beautiful in Spanish, but if you translated them the meaning was lost. That was how I felt upon the conclusion of this particular poem, as though I had missed something vital and just couldn’t fully grasp it all.

Aside from this, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this collection of poetry and look forward to more from this author. It will be interesting to see how this new writer develops and matures. I would also like to disclose that I do have a friendly relationship with this author so it is highly possible that I was overly (or underly) critical of her work because of this.

Joana’s rating: