Thread by @hoshontomba

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Yakoke (thank you) to Lenore Nox for providing a Kindle ARC in exchange for an honest review. "Memento Mori" by Lenore Nox is a collection of poetry accompanied by a cover that I feel screams religion and death but surprisingly, that isn't all that's behind the cover.

Poetry has evolved through the years and is (in my opinion) the type of writing where things are more subjective than objective. Alongside the traditional quality of the poems within this collection itself, I feel I cannot give anything less than 5 Stars.

There was a dark and almost haunting aspect to this collection but it was surprisingly modern and is something I would expect to be on a gothic or dark academia mood board. The very first note I took was "Political af!" right alongside the first poem "Roses and Daisies":

"An anthem for harshly broken / Suppressed by latent pings / Brought on by seedy madness / Of dictarors fashioned in' kings / Putin, Trump, or Hitler's kin– / Take a pick."

From daddy issues to love poems – there was a stark contrast that had me questioning what the author intended by splitting the collection into sections I-V; I felt singular sections could not stand alone or even held cohesiveness from one poem to the next in any given section.

Despite this sort of leaping feel, there was an almost resigned, dry humor to some of the poetry that I feel is fitting for the state of the world we're living in and tied things together overall.

This is a poetry collection I felt was very niche despite covering a wide array of subjects and emotions simply for the fact that I, unfortunately, know far too many people that would balk at the mention of Trump and rant instead of reading any further. For the record, I'm a fan!

The use of homophones and assonance lended a great flow to these poems, allowing sounds to ring out through the words and give an almost song-like quality. (Can you tell that there are a lot of "almost" moments for me? This feels intentional; keep the reader coming back for more)

There were two poems I marked as flagged, curious if they were written as slam poetry or spoken word due to how they read out loud: "Dead Branches" and "Prophet".

Lenore's work is certainly for fans of Sylvia Plath and Edgar Allen Poeboth mentioned at various points throughout.

Despite noticing the use of traditional poetry devices like rhyming early on and an overall vibe reminiscent of those two, it took me nearly the whole book to realize this. Due to the nature of anonymity that accompanies this collection, I struggled to make connections.

Words have different impacts I think, depending on who is saying them. A veteran saying "Their headstones remaining blank" has an entirely different impact than a Native saying so due to the latter being something that could be reminiscent of all the boarding school graves.

For that reason, I do wish I knew more about the identity of the author so I could discover more of what's hidden between the lines here.

(I was curious if Lenore is Native given the line "I killed the prophet to remind god I was lit on fire / By the cleansing in 1604")

(This line from "The Prophet" struck me because of the historical period of Acadians and Mi'kmaq allyship that ultimately led to their cleansing in 1755 after failing to prove loyalty to the British crown.)

There were so many poems I felt would make great conversation starters.

And I'm curious if anyone else feels like they heard "Give me a moment / I need to catch my breath / It feels like I've been running" in a song or something because that's been stuck in my head but the air of familiarity is something I can't shake despite Google finding nothing.

Overall, this was very well done and I plan to seek out Lenore's work again and check back on reviews to see what other readers thought.

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