The "Empty Your Cup" pages contain sublime poetry worth reading. Some poems are filled with deeper meaning, while others are trite. Yet, all are meant as gifts to lighten our loads, containing beacons of light.

While many elements of life and the nature of human beings are mentioned in ways that may seem familiar, other poetry pieces within this slim volume provide impactful originality. The poem "Human Kind" contains power in the title because of its impressive tie-in ending.

As a reader, I genuinely appreciate it when one's poetry hits all the right notes and shines as a genius at work. However, while there were hit poetry pieces, there were also, for me, some misses. While the rhythm and rhymes were good, and I appreciated the pacing with the provision of blank pages between each poem shared, not all poems are of the same caliber. Some provided sentences and phrasing of thoughts to ponder, while others were a "whiz-bang," and you had read it all too quickly for lack of a deeper meaning.

Unless written in jest, poetry catering to adults is meant to provide guidance and wisdom. Schools of thought that perhaps haven't been taught or thought of in quite the same way. Revelatory and encouraging, engaging and relevant, written to be read for others to become better than. Poetry should draw the reader in. However, this often requires delving into topics beyond fear and love, death and time, to things more remote and more challenging to articulate—the nuanced rather than the already well-versed and defined.

I believe the author has more to offer. Where this volume of poetry has everything neatly tied up in a bow, what about attempting to allow the rhythmic flow with rough-edged flair? This doesn't require darkness. It can be light, but with the underlying understanding that not all answers can be found until we cross over into what lies beyond the lives we live at the end of the "Ferris Wheel."