By Lili Reinhart
For someone who has never formally studied poetry, I have a lot of opinions about it. Good poetry should express emotions that were previously inexpressible. Good poetry should twist and turn words in imaginative ways, playing with language in a way that prose cannot. Lili Reinhart’s new book is not good poetry.
Given the prominence of Reinhart as an actor (and, according to the author bio on her book, as an activist for mental health), the poems are incredibly disappointing in their subject matter. Where are the poems normalizing mental health and self-care? Where are the poems empowering young women? Instead, almost every poem in the book is about love – and you can tell this because almost every poem includes some variation of the word love. I was so desperate for the author to just show me love, describe love, do something with language to express love other than to just say she loved. Her inability to describe the emotion without using the word made me begin to wonder if the poor woman had ever actually been in love.
And what kind of love does Reinhart write about? Certainly not an empowering one. We get too many poems that begin with “You let me,” as if the narrator had never considered claiming space as a woman without permission from another person. Of course, the gender of each poem’s love interest is rarely divulged, creating an ambiguity that lets the reader imagine what they want. Frankly, Reinhart’s largely publicized “coming out” as bisexual shortly before the release of this book feels like an offensive publicity stunt in the wake of the poems included here. Fans who support a queer actress can imagine same sex partners, while fans who are on the wrong side of history can imagine a straight actress. I am perhaps speaking from a place of bitterness, as someone who pre-ordered the book specifically to support the recently out Reinhart.
In all, this book is not worth the time or money. The language is bland and forgettable – more suitable to an angsty Instagram caption than to a published work. Unfortunately, Reinhart seems to have capitalized on her social position rather than having produced a moving book of poetry.
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