Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Poignant journey from abusive childhood to self-discovery

Lillian Brummet’s Towards Understanding is a powerful collection of free-form confessional poetry poignantly capturing her journey from an abusive childhood to self-discovery. Written with a contemplative tone, the collection weaves personal struggles, emotional depth, and a path toward healing, balancing heavy themes with moments of clarity and hope.

Towards Understanding

BookHookup review: Towards Understanding

Brummet’s willingness to delve into her raw emotions fosters a genuine connection with readers, making her experiences resonate deeply. Her grappling with feelings of guilt and shame adds layers of complexity, prompting important questions about the validity of these emotions.

This is an emotional read. While the imagery is subtle, the weight of her experiences draws you into her world. A palpable sense of vulnerability evokes feelings of isolation and a profound longing for connection and love. Brummet’s word choices reflect growth and transition, illuminating the lingering hope even amid her struggles.

The interplay of personal and universal themes invites readers to empathize with Brummet’s past while reflecting on their own experiences. This poetry will resonate with many, particularly those seeking healing from their own challenges. I highly recommend Towards Understanding to anyone navigating the complexities of their past, as Brummet’s reflections on growing up in a broken home, enduring her mother’s multiple marriages, and surviving sexual abuse create a poignant backdrop that informs her emotional landscape. I give this collection of poetry 5 out of 5 stars.

 

About the author: Lillian Brummet

Lillian Brummet has been professionally involved in the realm of writing since 19999. She began writing poetry as a teenager, which allowed her to express the issues and emotions from broken, abusive homes and being on her own at 13-years old. Through poetry, she learned how to see beyond these hurts and discover a world outside of herself, where she discovered her life had value and a purpose to fulfill.

Lillian’s award-winning poetry has appeared in five hardcover anthology books and continues to appear in magazines and newsletters across the globe. She has had the honor of attaining the Editor’s Choice Award for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry – not once, but twice. Her published books include the two-part series titled: Trash Talk (Books 1 & 2), a guide for authors titled: Purple Snowflake Marketing, and her recently released Poetic Wanderings: A Lifetime Of Memories (Playing With Words). She also hosts the Conscious Discussions Talk Radio show and manages Brummet’s Conscious Blog.

Lillian is passionate about poetry and continues to write in this genre between marketing her books and working on new manuscripts for future books. In those few stolen moments when she is not in the office she spends time with her husband gardening, indulging in nature, camping, and walking the many trails in British Columbia’s (Canada) wilderness.

 

Tuesday, May 9, 2023

A spiritual journey in poetry from despair to hope

How the Demons Leave: Escape from the Unseen Dungeons by Peter Okonkwo is book two in a three-book series. I enjoyed book 1, A Cry for Mercy: Escape from the Unseen Dungeons, voiced from the perspective of a narrator struggling under spiritual bondage. The front end of How the Demons Leave is a lament for justice with a heart-wrenching prayer for help as the narrator struggles with failures of life that have tormented him for years, accompanied by feelings of injustice at the lack of rewards for his hard work.

 

 

How the Demons Leave

The narrative changes when he moves toward faith as a resolution to his torment and recognizes he is under the influence of spiritual forces out to destroy his life. When he “runs to the Savior of the world, […] the only man who can save me,” the tone changes to seeking answers. He asks, “How can I be delivered from this long-time curse?”

 

His spiritual journey leads him to the answer. “You must be born again.”

 

Cry for Mercy
 

A Cry for Mercy

 

Okonkwo’s thought-provoking poetry looks at the role of faith as a cure for spiritual blindness. When the narrator gains spiritual sight, he understands how demons influenced his life, robbed him of success, and left him stranded in stagnation and hardship. When God answers his prayer, he feels a proverbial weight lifted and witnesses an angel loosening chains from his body and deliverance from the demons of stagnation.

 

In chapter one, the narrator of How the Demons Leave starts in deep despair and pessimism. This book chronicles his spiritual journey and discusses struggles with lack of success, hopelessness, injustice, and morality as he deals with contradictions and impulses that God uses to draw him to faith. This book is easy to read, and I recommend it to people looking for encouragement amid discouraging circumstances. The one thing I did not like about the book is that the narrator’s thoughts at one point sounded like the prosperity gospel promoting a name-it-claim-it philosophy that distorts the truth and embraces the false teaching that our thoughts control reality, instead of praising the power of God for his renewed mind and way of thinking

* * * *

As BookHookup, I am a longtime book reviewer. I received a free review copy of this book and have not received compensation for reviewing or recommending it. Some links in this post are affiliate links. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to amazon.com and affiliate sites.

Peter Okonkwo

 

About the Author Peter Okonkwo

Peter Okonkwo is a Nigerian writer, fatalist, publisher, editor, literary critic, spiritual philosopher, soon–to–be–novelist of Etean’s Destiny, and a certified orator from the Friendship Leadership Institute of Nigeria.

He is the author of six poetry collections: Ecstasy of the Dead; Fate, In the Dungeon of Doom; Whose Fault, Kismet or Impediment? and Escape from the Unseen Dungeons book series, (A Cry for Mercy, How the Demons Leave, and I Saw the Light)

Peter is gifted with the aptitude to explore and demystify certain difficult life issues through his thought–provoking, raw–arresting transcendent poetry. His works has been featured in notable literary magazines and newspaper, including the Australian Plumwood Mountain Journal, The Lagos Review, Ngiga Review, Hope Newspaper, among many others.

Peter is the host of the P. English Literature YouTube channel, where he reviews books and conducts interviews with authors around the world. His show has featured over 250 literature works from authors across the globe