My thanks to the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book to review. I tried to get into this poetry but it just didn't do it for me.

I did my best to like this poetry book but struggled to get even halfway through.

There are a few lines and one poem that did work, but the rest just didn't resonate at all.

What definitely didn't work were the often long and rambling titles. Some of the poems were about difficult relationships, obsessive behaviour, failing to move on from people who aren't good for us, and to be honest it sometimes felt rather tedious. At other times, it read like a self-help book.

I am sorry because the author has clearly put a lot of work into this collection, but it just isn't for me I'm afraid.

This was sent to me as an ARC and I am grateful to the publisher, Button Poetry, but I won't be reading more poetry by this author.

I am going to buy a copy of this as soon as I get off work. This collection of poetry has moved me so deeply and made such an impact on me that I want to wallpaper my bedroom with these poems. All parts of the human experience are touched on and are presented in such a devastatingly beautiful way. These words conjure up the feelings we have all felt and serve as a reminder that we are not alone in our pain, grief, joy, or love. I cannot recommend this book enough.

Really interesting, intense/hard hitting that make you think. There is an index at the front which is nice. The poems are pretty much two pages.

This is a beautiful collection on self-love, healing, and wonder. There are lots of truths here, and poems I like to think of as "self-help" or motivational poems. There are also poems that remind me of Mary Oliver in the sense that they focus on hope and give you greater appreciation for the world and everyone in it, including yourself.

I will say that some of the writing on things like racism gave me weird vibes, and were a little on the nose/out of nowhere? I'm not sure though, maybe that's just me. That was just one section though, the majority of the collection was not like that.

Several lines took my breath away, and I especially loved the poems about her complicated relationship with her father. If poems about self-love are things you need to hear right now, this collection would be great for you.

Thank you to Netgalley and Button Poetry for the chance to read and review this ARC.

4/5: This book was really good and some of the poems really spoke to me. I enjoyed the fact that all the poems followed a theme but it wasn't my exact cup of tea. I would recommend this to someone who loves nature and poetry.

What I Learned from the Trees
by L.E. Bowman
Pub Date 21 Sep 2021
Button Poetry, Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Members' Titles
Health, Mind & Body | Poetry






I am reviewing a copy of What I Learned From the Trees through Button Poetry, Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) and NetGalley:



What I Learned from the Trees is a collection of poetry dealing with the intricate relationship between humans and nature, and how these often overlooked, everyday interactions affect us as individuals, families, and communities.




With a backbone rooted in primordial imagery and allegory, and a focus on how the growing disconnect with our own wants, needs, and fears creates deeper divides in our relationships, this collection is very relevant to today’s society and the struggles we face with the ever-expanding detachment between humans and the natural world.



This collection of poetry makes you ask Aren’t all living creatures seeking a notable existence? A deep sense of belonging? Of relevance? Of purpose? Of love? How often do we yearn for these wants, yet fight the vulnerability it takes to reach them? Why do we so clearly seek each other, yet refuse to reach out our hands?



I give What I Learned From the Trees Four out of five stars!



Happy Reading!

It was supposed to be good cause i've a special corner for trees and poetry in my heart. But somehow the poems couldn't make feel how i should.

To be honest, most of them failed to portray the hidden meaning of it. When i started to analyze, First few poems were good. They were easy to understand, went with the flow. And The thing i liked most, is that those poems i liked has a very deep meaning. It has a essence of broken heart, aloneness. Like_

how do you expect
to understand your pain
if you never
let it speak.

or

"You're over most nights.
i tell myself it's the love, but i know it's the leaving;
you're days are numbered now.
i see it in your eyes more than anything.
Dilated. Scared.
Wild.

i feel author needs to observe more and be more diligent while sorting words.

Thank you Netgalley for providing me an arc in exchange for an honest review.

If you enjoy Tumblr poets or #InstaPoetry, then perhaps you might enjoy the poems in L.E. Bowman's "What I Learned from the Trees." If you consider yourself a more discerning reader of poetry, you might want to skip this collection altogether. I've followed Button Poetry for years and have several collections of theirs that I have enjoyed, so I was looking forward to reading their newest release and discovering a poetic voice I had never heard from before. I will say--Bowman has a special knock for writing striking titles, the poems were accessible (themes of relationship, self-love, growth, acceptance) and there were several stanzas and one-liners that were quite beautiful to read, (i.e. "Isn't all of the world already in existence?"). However, as a whole, this collection read more like the iPhone notes app of an aspiring poet than a cohesive collection.

This book of poetry hit me emotionally. There was parts I deeply connected with and made me think of past experiences. I enjoyed this so much! 5* rating from me.

A big Thank you to Netgalley & Button Poetry for giving me a free copy of this book!

5 / 5 Stars!!

OK, I know it's obvious, but I feel like it needs to be said: The Cover Artist did an amazing job. The art looks stunning.
It's what caught my eye in the first place and what influenced me to request this book. Absolutly beautiful.

The cover isn't the only beautiful thing about this collection though. The poems are too. I feel like I bookmarked almost every page and every poem, because once I read a good one and thought "OK, this is my favourit for sure", I turned the page and found another stunning piece.
I'll admit, I believed that this cover and blurb, would lead to another kind of poetry, but that doesn't change the fact, that the poems I did get, were breathtaking.

I related a lot to them. If you asked me for my favourit, I would not be able to tell. Some hit closer to home then the author probably intended and a few weren't my personal cup of tea, but that doesn't mean, that they weren't still greatly written. The author absolutly knows how to write poetry and how to hit the mark. The language and imagery is gorgeous too.

I've never heard of L. E. Bowman before this, but now that I do, I'll keep an eye out for her future collections.

So yeah, I can absolutly reccomand this.

Thank you NetGalley for.a chance to read and review this!

While the book started off seeming like there was a lot of potential, it did not work for me. The blurb gave me high hopes, but this seems to be very ordinary poetry.

I enjoyed a fair amount of this, but also found some of it to be very similar to other modern poetry i've read. Overall, I enjoyed it but didn't find that it stood out amongst other collections.

I thought this book was drawn out and uneventful. Most of the poetry muddled together to make an incoherent mess. I would not recommend this collection of poetry although there were a few good kernels to take away with you.

This collection of poems is not exactly what I anticipated. The title implies an exploration of the connection of the human condition with the natural world, and the lack of that connection leading to a profound imbalance. It seems that this poetry collection is more about the imbalance between people, and a connection to nature is tangential at best. Rather than exploring the sense of fulfillment that can be achieved by re-connecting to nature, this book of poems seems to be a deep dive into tortured unhappiness. It is unfair to compare poets, but Mary Oliver was quite skilled at drawing lines between the human heart and nature. Perhaps I wrongly anticipated a book of poems similar to Oliver's works and was disappointed for no other reason than it failed to deliver.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM THE TREES

Lauren E. Bowman's second book of poetry, WHAT I LEARNED FROM THE TREES (Button Poetry; September 21, 2021), is profoundly vulnerable, employing the type of inventive, vivid metaphor that comes from fixed rumination. The book is written in free verse, which allows for a more intimate, interior, and run-on tone. Bowman writes accessible poetry in a style that will be popular among contemporary readers of Jane Hirshfield and Mary Oliver⁠—while impactful, the language is bare, clear, and direct.

Bowman opens with a collection of stinging remembrances, describing the ugly dependency of volatile relationships and the pain of breaking those bonds. Incrementally, the speaker learns to manage that pain and indeed to treat it as a catalyst for becoming something new and healthier. Bowman capably distills those processes of grief and loss: healing, bereavement, and the slow growth that follows.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM THE TREES is packed with imagery of animals, of plants, and of landscapes, emphasizing the wildness of being human, the fundamental essence of being an animal in the earth’s ecosystem, and the unstoppable vitality of life. In the throes of pain, Bowman describes the lurking wolves of anguish—on page 24:

“In my mind they were always emaciated
and desperate, and hungry;
hunkered beings that were part dog
and part despair.”

Later, a landscape of numbness: Bowman writes, “wrap yourself in silence... / allow time to move until the heat of a new season / comes down from the mountains” (148). And at long last, in the final section of the book, the speaker is able to fully engage with the earth⁠—

“maybe it was just the truth of the world…
the clouds and the trees and the birds
all said,
...tomorrow you will rise
with all of your strength.”

Bowman sits with our culture of need, linking the vulnerabilities of desire and cultural capitalism: “My hands are open, so why aren’t they full” (34), “My house is clean, and the food I eat isn’t frozen, / ...My life is beautiful, isn’t it?” (22), and “Nothing will drain you faster than work / you were not born to do.” (26). Later, that ‘have vs have not’ mentality is rejected. On page 200:

“I went hiking once…
there was us and the trees and what little we could carry
...We had nothing and everything,
and I finally understood what it meant to be free.”

Bowman advocates for a deep connection with our wildness⁠—when the speaker turns back to the wolves mentioned early in the book, they find that there are only a few, that the wolves are singing instead of despairing, that they are a pack that might welcome the speaker into the fold. There is definite success in WHAT I LEARNED FROM THE TREES; it communicates an undergirding of our collective emotional experience: hurt, abandonment, the difficulties of reopening ourselves to new vulnerabilities, and the difficult practice of grounding ourselves⁠—literally⁠—in self-love.

Do you ever feel like you are not the right person to judge the poetry? Poetry is a form of art and it´s open to many variations of interpretations, therefore in my opinion no one has a right to say definitely that this poem is greater than another.
I like very much the fist part of this collection of poems, where the author focuses on nature. It´s beautifully written, words are soft and frigale just like nature around us.
Sadly, later on something goes wrong. Next parts are becoming heavy, not poetic at all. It´s more like chopped prose that needs to be tidied up. There´s less nature, more humans and it´s just murky. Here and there you can find some gems, lovely phrases, but that´s not enough.
Review also posted on Goodreads.

What I learned from the trees is a poetry collection with some of them related to - as expected from the title - to nature. It was nothing special, nothing really stuck with me apart from a paragraph or two, but it wasn’t completely bad either. I thoguht all of the poems were going to be connected to nature in some way or another, which is not the case there are quite a few with no relation to trees or anything. It was a decent read but if it would’ve been any longer i don’t think i would’ve picked it up

Thank you to Netgalley and to the publisher for providing me with an eARC of this book. I’ll be sharing a full review on Instagram next week - @bookswithbecki.

⭐️⭐️⭐️
I was intrigued by this poetry book by Bowman is a collection of reflections and musings about love, healing and nature. Nature Connection is something I’m really passionate about and I loved the way the author related natural occurrences with human experiences.

Bowman manages to discuss love, healing, life, racism, body image, privilege and pain through the lens of nature and for that, I applaud this collection of work. As somebody who doesn’t often read poetry, this was a refreshing read and I think I will seek out more of the author’s work.

However, I had expected more poems focused on Nature itself based on the blurb and the introductory poem. I was therefore a little disappointed that Nature is too often studied through the basis of human relationships. That being said, it was still a lovely and emotive read - I finished it in one sitting.

This book was not quite what I was expecting. I read the title assuming this would be focused around nature; however, that was not the case. The author shows a degree of appreciation for nature, specifically trees, early on but this dwindles and eventually fades away as the book progresses.

I read a fair amount of poetry, and this was just not my cup of tea. There was very little that I gained from this book in a literary sense, and none of the writing was anything to write home about.