Valuing, by Christopher Kondrich, is a collection of complex, whole-hearted poems. Despite the fact that I didn’t personally vibe with this writer’s style, I was impressed by the depth and wording in what is a fairly short, traditional collection.

Kondrich might appeal to a more patient connoisseur of poetry, but that just isn’t me at this point in my life. I can hardly blame the book for that.

If you’re a fan of poetry and you want to delve into something a little more ambiguous and complex, this might be right up your alley. Enjoy.

A complex and thoughtful collection of short poems that managed to carry water theme throughout. A refreshing break from the fake poetry that social media has spawned.

There were a couple of poems here that I really liked - "Schedule for Burning" and the poems linked with the Goya paintings - but the others just didn't grab me at all. I found this collection a bit muted and boring.

This collection just didn’t hit home for me. I can recognize the talent in their writing and some of the lines were very well written. However, I just never understood the message they were trying to get across. Perhaps this would translate better as spoken word pieces.

This poetry collection would be a good choice for an experienced poem connoisseur. It's a fairly short collection that doesn't have a particular theme, which is one of the reasons why it didn't especially resonate with me. The poems are collected from various publications, so it's a varied sampling of the author's work.

I did like the formatting of the poems, because it's very traditional. Many people don't like the Instagram poet trend that has been sweeping the book world for the past couple years. If that's the case for you, then Valuing would be a good collection to read, because it's fairly standard poetry: capitalization, grammar, and stanzas. It's still free verse but it's more formal.

I, however, am quite a fan of the insta-poet phenomenon, because it's easier to understand. Because of this, I feel that much of the poems in this collection went right over my uncultured head. But that's not the author's fault and it doesn't detract from my rating of 3 stars, meaning this is a solid, well-written collection that a lot of people will enjoy. It just wasn't my cup of tea.

*NetGalley provided me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*

It was a pleasure to discover Christopher Kondrich's work in Valuing. These poems are personal and artistically rendered. There is something new to find and treasure in each of them as Kondrich uses verse to explore a variety of topics. As a lover of poetry, I would strongly recommend this author's work.

It is worth noting that Valuing is the poet's second collection -- and I loved this book enough to seek out the first book. I look forward to seeing what is next for this poet.

This was an okay collection of poetry. There were occasional lines that stood out to me, but as a whole it didn't really catch my interest. I feel like Kondrich definitely has potential as a poet, but for whatever reason this just was pretty meh throughout.

Unfortunately this is just not my type of poetry. I find poetry to be more simplistic and this was very wordy to me. I didn’t connect or understand the poets voice.