5 ⭐️

I’ll say it once again, I’m a huge fan of poetry and I read and review collections as often as I can. But this one is different!

I can’t tell you how happy I am to have picked up this ebook. A powerful, chill-inducing, educational and emotional collection of Sonetas that take you on a journey to view the world through a perspective that needs to be seen.

Set up in four “books”, with endnotes giving the history about each and every sonata so there is room for understand and learning, this poetry is completely accessible to all readers. IWith hard hitting themes like slavery, modern racism, the war on Gaza, forgotten (or erased) history of minority stories, etc, I think this read is essential (though very heavy).

This poetry is unlike a lot of modern poetry I’ve read recently. It feels old and practiced yet fresh and brand new. It’s the kind of writing elicits visceral emotions, captures your attention and leaves you think long after. Not only the poetry itself but the endnotes and all that those contain were so well researched and thought out.

This came at the perfect time in my life, a time where it felt like all my shame, anger and pain I feel towards the current political climate felt like it was falling into a void. This validated, showed me beyond my own sight, and made me think.

I highly recommend this collection!

Like most poetry collections Manifest Destiny is a mixed bag of some poems I would like to remember and others that will fade quickly from memory. What makes this collection stand out is the inclusion of end notes that highlight the inspirations and parallels explored in these rigidly structured poems. I also enjoyed the bold block print artwork that delineated each section.

I'm not usually a poetry person so I'm not sure my review can do this book justice. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The subject matter of the poems was easy to understand but the end notes added substantial depth and insight into the author's thoughts. The social justice themes are very strongly woven throughout the book. I think it can bring further awareness to issues and also prompt introspection on the part of the reader. I also thoroughly enjoyed his interpretation of Scripture and how he tied it to current social justice issues. Thank you to the author and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I'm not a connoisseur of poetry so this review should be taken with a grain of salt. Interesting book of "sonetas." The author provides detailed background information for each at the end of each chapter. I like that there was a short introduction to poetry and the structure of the form.

That being said, this didn't translate into an ebook well. The version for kindle fire is impossible to read and the formatting on kindle ap for the phone isn't much better.