RYP's A Convolution of Emotions is a unique poetry collection, in that it includes poetry, short essays, thoughts, and artwork that span the author's early adolescent to early adult life. The goal of the collection is ambitious- to show the author's growth in reconciling with trauma, family, identity, and purpose. There were several poems I bookmarked, because it was clear RYP dug deep and wrestled with the feelings hidden deep inside, and when they were translated to the page, the result was beautiful.

The tone of the collection switches throughout, and it is easy to follow, as the reader, which poems were written in the author's youth, and which poems were written when she was older. However, putting tone aside, some of the poems still felt like drafts. There were a few moments where the author was close to striking gold, but the language was too loose, the imagery not clear enough, and the message of the poem not well-defined. These moments had nothing to do with the age of the author, and they could have been solved by a little more attention to the fine details within the poems.

All of the poems seemed to follow the same, free-verse structure as well. With the mixture of mediums of communication in this collection, it would have been nice and beneficial to see different forms of poetry represented. Instead, many of the poems followed the same formatting and rhyming couplet scheme, which ended up binding the author in several poems into forcing language that was shallow, rather than exploring the depth of emotion and experience behind each entry.

Was this collection for me? Personally, no. But I do think this author has so much experience and so many thoughts worth reading, that I am glad I read it. I would love to see more work as RYP continues to evolve as a writer, and I think that this collection stands as a testament to where the author has come from, the struggles faced, and paves the way for the road ahead.