To The Man I Loved Too Much is a collection of 100 poems divided in 14 chapters each depicting mini love stories from the initial spark to the heartbreak that inevitably ends the story. It finishes with the chapter: To the man I love too much, title in present tense and with a last poem about time, leaving the reader to wonder if the author has finally found love.
Found in my sister’s book shelf
Being at home for Christmas always brings up the most diverse emotions. Especially then, reading soma poetry can be pure self-care. More than that, I haven’t gotten around to some poetry collections in a while. This one’s title immediately spoke to me as I am a person who loves deeply and thus easily gets hurt. The title further already alludes to the structure of the collection. The poet addresses another man in each of the chapters. Those are further introduced through quotes by different authors and philosophers that comment on certain feelings of love and desire. This set-up was indeed very promising.
Different kinds of romantic love
In this poetry collection, the poet focuses on different experiences of heterosexual love. Her experience nonetheless allows a lot of different identifications. From first love and short, tough promising sexual encounters to affairs and cheating, and long relationships that eventually seemed doomed. Of course, I did identify and connect with some experiences expressed in the poems better than others. I think I immediately fehlt five or six of them deeply. With others not really talking to me, I believe that there is definitely morse variety and others can find themselves in them just as easily as I could.
Style and Art
As this is the first poetry collection of the poet, I want to cut her some slack. I saw a lot of people discussing the repetiveness of her rhymes, for example. I for my part wasn’t bothered by that but find moving rhyming scheues impressive and convincing. I love it when she plays with this kind of structuring and would love to go back and explore her use of impure rhymes. More than that, the individual chapters and poems are differently composited and movingly speak of similar cycles but different outcomes of falling in love and hurting.
In conclusion,
as a person who loves to deeply connect to soma poems in a collection but does not need to understand all of them, I thoroughly enjoyed this one. The poet’s first publication already recalled some of my own experiences in beautiful words. I would love to also take a look at her other releases.
The poet:
Gabrielle G.’s writing is driven by pure emotion that will take your breath away, and leave you wanting more, as you wipe away your tears.
Gabrielle would do anything for a cup of tea, always celebrates her half-birthdays, and feels that everyone has an inner voice that guides our passions.
Born in France and having lived in Switzerland, Gabrielle currently resides in Montreal. Source