I’ve been
wanting to review this book ever since I started this blog so yay to long
overdue productivity! But also, yay to giving myself a chance to read other
poetry books and taking the time to mull over poetic prose since then because
to tell you the truth, the piece I would’ve written back then and the one I am writing now are different in so many ways, that I’m, for once, thankful for my procrastinative nature.   

The first draft of this review read only one thing: Lang Leav is the next Warsan Shire.
Today, I’d slap the hand who wrote that (ouch), but still have the compassion to understand where that analogy came from.

I’ve always thought of Warsan Shire as the poetry guru of the digital age, introduced to me through spoken word and the wondrous maze that is Youtube at
16 years old.

Hence the mental comparison to Lang Leav, the world of a 16-year-old.

Reading Lullabies, I am reminded by Shire’s calm and soothing voice talking about love and youth and pain and heartbreak. However, dulled by the years, I had
forgotten how empowering that voice used to be, listening to it again reminded me why Leav’s singsongy poetry cannot compete.

Of course, there were pieces I truly enjoyed reading but solely based on how relative they seemed to me at the time but not for the beauty of the poem in and of itself.

Throughout my second read of Lullabies, I couldn’t help getting pissed. Over and over and over again. The theme of co-dependency and redundant teenage heartbreak gradually becomes too much to bear, which threw me so far off Shire’s writings that always inspired empowerment and liberation.

I once reviewed Rupi Kaur’s prose and mentioned Leav as her better in the Insta-poetry world. I’m now compelled me to retract that statement, I still feel strongly about keeping the world of Instagram away from books, and books away from Lang Leav.

Enjoy and always bring a book home. x