RISE is a poetry collection full of potent messages, inspirational notions, and thought-provoking ideologies. The pieces are brimming with profound wisdom as well. The author pours his heart and soul into each piece, especially when he is standing up for equality and human rights.
RISE also celebrates the diversity of our beautiful planet and its inhabitants and it unveils harsh truths that need to be faced before we can experience total-world transformation. Most importantly, it inspires us to dive deep within ourselves and truly introspect, especially during these uncertain times fraught with fear, racism, and societal collapse.
RISE is a poetry collection full of potent messages, inspirational notions, and thought-provoking ideologies. The pieces are brimming with profound wisdom as well. The author pours his heart and soul into each piece, especially when he is standing up for equality and human rights.
RISE also celebrates the diversity of our beautiful planet and its inhabitants and it unveils harsh truths that need to be faced before we can experience total-world transformation. Most importantly, it inspires us to dive deep within ourselves and truly introspect, especially during these uncertain times fraught with fear, racism, and societal collapse.
Welcome to RISE, a collection of poetry that touches on many emotions of the human psyche. These pieces are meant to be a buffet for your dining pleasure, an assortment of options and offerings for your consideration. You can pick and choose what you like or try a little bit of everything.
Over the last two years or so, we have been dealing with a lot of challenges, including COVID-19, political unrest, relationship issues, and racial tension. I selected the title “RISE” to help us rise above those challenges by beginning to think about them from a higher perspective and smelling the roses while still facing our issues head on and looking at them in a new light.
RISE is a state of mind, but it is also being used as an acronym for the following:
· Relationships: the relationships we have with each other and with nature.
· Introspection: to look within ourselves to find truth in our actions and our thoughts.
· Spirituality: gets back to being concerned about the human spirit as opposed to material or physical things. That is, to shift our priorities to the things that really matter.
· Evolve: harnessing all the above to help us evolve into a more caring, healthy, and accepting society.
The first course is “Love and Family”.
The second course is “Spiritual and Inspirational”.
The third course is “Nature”.
The fourth course is “Philosophical & Social”.
The fifth course is for those with a bigger appetite: flash fiction/short stories that may be a little bit more filling for the hungry crowd who didn’t get enough to eat with the poetry.
I end this feast with a section of definitions. I provide a different take on the definitions for several words that we all know and love. Check it out to see what you think. Maybe you’ll have some additional definitions of your own to add!
Thanks for purchasing this book and I hope that it will provide you with the nourishment you need.
Here’s to wishing that we all will RISE together!
Sample Poem:
How Do I Love You, Dear?
How do I love you, dear? It is impossible to say.
My love for you is strong and I cannot find the words.
When I try to explain it, the true meaning does not convey.
I hope the right words will be revealed one day…
I long to tell you how I feel so you will become aware,
but every time I try, the words seem to dissipate in the air.
Please don’t think that my goal for us is to just have an affair
or that my inability to define this means I don’t care.
My passion for you comes from a noble place,
but the emotion is too overwhelming to reveal.
I am so happy to be able to experience your embrace,
and my love will continue to mature when given your grace.
I hope you can wait until this thing is properly explained,
so you can understand the full breadth of my exclamations.
Know that I cherish you with all my heart and soul
and that I will always be here for you to my dying days.
Rise is an experimental work by Henry Lee Thomas. It starts by outlining the intent of the work and the connotation of the acronym RISE in the context of the writings. The book is divided into five sections with creative pieces on love, family, society, nature, spiritual discovery, philosophy, and some short fiction.
The writer has used various techniques in his poems. Your Little Black Dress is stylishly rendered and Drifting is artistically indented. Christmas is presented in an Acrostic style. The writer has used both tender displays of love as well as a few erotic expressions. The political parts hold significant observations on the ways of the world.
Some of the writings exhibit anguish, entanglement, and trauma, such as Relief and Poison Parent. The spiritual section has encouraging verses befitting the theme, such as The Darkness Doesn’t Last Forever, and also messages from the Christian way of life. It’s Hydrangea Time is a beautiful poem that I enjoyed but on the next page, Air Affair, seemed almost juvenile.
Despite a plethora of writing to choose from, I could not connect to this poetry collection. It seems like a first draft, a place to jot down thoughts in their raw form. The ideas needed more nurturing and the words needed tending. The words lack a certain finesse, and they seemed rushed. I would recommend an editorial polish of the book to make the rocks shine with the brilliance they hide within. This is an impressive concept and with a little effort, it can become an impressive book. For me the stories in the end and the writer's definition of some common terms were the more interesting parts in the book.