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In The Darkness of Lanaia’s Garden, Ms. Lee brings us a collection of dark poetry with illustrations by Charles Davis. Each poem tells a mini-story—usually about love, death, or other morbid topics. In this collection, you’ll get poems about emotional and physical pain, reincarnation, ghosts and haunted places, and ancient civilizations such as Atlantis and Egypt.
These poems might have been more enjoyable if the author hadn’t used an excessive amount of adverbs and unnecessary words along with what felt like forced rhyming. I’m not a big fan of rhyming poetry unless it flows well with a natural rhythm, which didn’t happen here. If not done well, rhyming poetry sounds clumsy and unappealing. And, unfortunately, that’s what happened here.
Another problem with this collection is that it contains a fair amount of repetitive phrases such as “more than myth,” “everything said, everything done,” and “quiet as a mime”—or some variation of those phrases, just to name a few.
However, Ms. Lee grabs your attention with the mini-stories in some of the poems. She has a wonderful way of leading her readers to a surprise ending, and her use of history and historical characters and places will bring a chill to a warm sunny day, just as they’re meant to. So if you don’t mind the awkward wording and extra word baggage, you might enjoy this dark collection of poetry—but it wasn’t the poetry that I particularly enjoyed.
Ed. Note: For more on The Darkness of Lanaia’s Garden, visit AGPress.com.
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