“Let us never deem unworthy a tree that doesn’t bear fruit. / For even the tree without leaves can bring a man to tears.”

to everyone needing all of the above but who cannot yet put
that longing into words
this is for you

This is some extroninary literature work. The writing is phenomenal. I enjoyed this book very much.

Quotes:

+“So many people are walking around with bones in their heart. / We hear them rattling as they walk, like ominous wind chimes. / They catch our attention for a moment, but then cars honk, / maybe a simple hello would stop the noise, but we’re far too afraid to touch unknown skin.”

+“You threw your words into the sea / Cast a net of regret / But it came up empty”

Let me first share some of my best moments while reading this poetry collection.
1.
first thing i’ll be to a strange man with whom i disagree
is a whore

male fragility

2.
i hear waves when he walks by
he carries the ocean in his chest
“why doesn’t it rain where you live?” i ask him
“all your flowers are dead”
he says, “exhaling tornadoes is more my forte”
why don’t you cry?

3.

she tells you your dick is small
& half your self-worth
melts on the floor in a puddle
more

4.

my grandma doesn’t play the trumpet but when she laughs
i march to the sound of grinding stones

5.

beauty is the scent between your thighs the constellation of dots that form your earliest scar the warmth of your breasts
the sway of your hips
the way you toss off your shoes
to feel the earth with your feet
all you

6.

what i feel is hard to explain
just imagine
running to & fro
while having roots
that feed you
without holding you in place
root


7.

a bird will shit on your head. it’s flying above you, & it cares little about what is going on below. you need to take flight. shut off your brain for a second. birds don’t have much of one anyway.
just fly.
trust your gut

Recently I have been reading and adoring poetry and I picked this book (blue bird by Magda Ayuk, a Canadian writer of Cameroonian descent) after reading Crush by Richard Siken with I loved.

So in short this collection which contains more than 200 poems, speaks about feminism, female body, racism, freedom and spirituality. All the poems are very simple and to-the-point or we can say “ written in the tradition of Rupi Kaur”. Its refreshing and empowering. The starting poems were ok but as it proceed it became remarkable and astounding. Though majority of the poems stuck to me like a thunderbolt and there were poems that made me roll my eyes ( they were too cliched ). It is a lovely collection.

One thing that I really admire was how it handled the subject of racism.
For example:
so far, i’ve lived abroad in two countries. &, black woman, no one is as exoticized as we are. our hair, our skin & even the way we smell is otherized. we are the closest thing to alien man has seen. this is how i know that if aliens existed, man would try to destroy them, take their land, put a price on them & exhibit them for all to see

I would highly recommend this collection to the readers who enjoyed Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey.

The beautiful woman on the book cover was what initially grabbed my attention. Unfortunately, I did not love Blue Bird as much as I hoped to. I actually have a lot of mixed feelings about the collection, which is largely due to the inconsistency of writing and quality. There were a number of poems that really spoke to me and that allowed me to contemplate on existing issues, but there were also a handful of pieces that came off as odd or sloppy writing.

What I appreciated the most about Blue Bird was that it is a loud, no-holds-barred celebration of diversity, especially for black women. It is blunt, raw, and unapologetic. Magda Ayuk writes about not only feeling comfortable in her own skin, but also, and perhaps more importantly, being proud of her heritage. She also writes about self-image, self-love, and numerous introspective topics with defiance, fierceness and sincerity. In addition to this, this book touches on sensitive yet extremely important topics, such as racism and systemic oppression, although it is more greatly inspired by lighter themes, such as positivity, freedom, and acceptance.

My problems with Blue Bird mainly involved writing technicalities (e.g. style, structure, use of language), lacking poetic devices, and a couple of inconsistencies. Despite this, I believe that a number of people would be able to really identify with Magda Ayuk’s pieces, and on a larger note, her journey as a black woman. Her voice as a poet is refreshingly quirky, unapologetically blunt, and noticeably modern. She exhibits a ton of potential as a poet, and I can only hope that her succeeding poetry books will be more enjoyable.

Powerful and raw, this is exactly what I needed to read at the right time.

Sexy. Raw. Visceral. Sensual. Confrontational. Feminine. Masculine. Emotional. Compassionate. Passionate. Spiritual. Love. Self. Black. Blackness. Black woman.

Those are the words that swam through my head the most while reading this book of poetry and prose. This feels like an intimate self-reflection poured on to the page. The rhythms change from being extremely fluid to a rough staccato. Each poem seemed to highlight a different topic or take a topic and shine a separate but engaging light on it. I got lost in the ebb and flow of the page. Some of these poems really stood out. I loved the poems that focused on sexuality and womanhood and being Black. I feel like Ayuk really highlights and stroked the core of Black womanhood with a few of the poems she included. Many of these poems oozed a sensuality that was inviting but not overdone. Even the more spiritual poems were engrossing and heartfelt.

I really enjoyed Blue Bird. I can see myself going back and rereading certain poems and really reflecting on what they mean to me and the different ways Ayuk left for them to be interpreted. I’d recommend this book. It’s complex in a sense. I can’t nail this down to just one type of poetry or one overall theme because I feel like Ayuk included a wide range of topics to be explored.

Some might argue that books like this are plainly journal entries and not poems, and I tend to agree, usually. I used the same argument when I read Rupi Kaur's Milk and Honey and urged people not to buy that book. This book also has the same type of short excerpts-from-the-authors-diary sort of poems, but it is different from Kaur's works in a few ways.
Magda Ayuk's poems exude a wave of positivity and pride. She writes about wearing her melanin skin with pride. About loving herself first. About being a woman. About her heritage and ancestry.
I found her poems to radiate a wholesomeness that I haven't come across in other such poems
While longer forms of poetry are more of my thing, I was so in love with the poems in this book that the review copy on my kindle is now mostly highlighted.
Magda Ayuk could indeed have connected the poems a little and have made them a little longer, but I like them just the same.
Even if you do not like short poetry, I urge you to read this book if only for the message it conveys.

Magda Ayuk's collection Blue Bird is poetry that explores the self--how we love ourselves, hate ourselves, and how this impacts relationships outside of ourselves. The collection contains many shorter pieces, some only a line or two.

What stood out about this collection is the repetition of images. Two images that kept resurfacing was fingers (what was on fingers, what was being licked off of fingers) and food. These images appeared in wildly different ways, which was interesting to see, but the repetition did become a little flat by the end of the collection.

Overall, the collection was an interesting read, but it definitely could have been more.

Poems are not my taste and the book starts with "inappropriate" language for my ninth graders. I can see the appeal for readers of Kaur, but I will not be buying.

Some of the themes/poems are very touching and beautiful, but overall this is not for me.

This collection is filled with exactly the kind of poetry I love. It doesn’t adhere to specific rules and can tell a story in a single line.
I think the ebook could have been formatted better, but maybe that's just how the review copy is.

While this book is categorized as a Poetry Book, this is actually more of a prose. It was a slow read at first but it became more interesting as you go a couple pages further. Some lines though felt like a good witty status in social media.

I really really really hated this book. Sorry, but this is not poetry.

Please explain to me how these single lines with just barely commendable statements are poems.

-I would have liked it if the author combined all the statements and made something bigger, richer and deeper out of them.
I guess more on why I didn’t like this poetry, or not-poetry, was that it was too thin. The sentences and statements stopped in and with themselves. There was no searching, digging deeper, they were like deep-ish? statuses for a social media platform, maybe twitter. But I do see the potential in which this author could build and construct more and in-depth essays and articles on her thoughts. Even longer things that could be called poetry. But this wasn’t poetry. This didn’t have metaphor and this didn’t have realization underneath the lullaby of language. This was laziness and don’t call that poetry.

This is a kinder, gentler collection of poetry than I was perhaps expecting, but sometimes we need that.