Reflections: A Poetry Collection by Elena Carter

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Poetry doesn’t work for everybody. It takes an intricate combination of factors for the versed lines to reach a reader’s heart. A poet must spill a part of their soul onto the pages, and those lines should touch a familiar string in the reader.

In my case, “Reflections: A Poetry Collection” by Elena Carter has ticked all the right boxes.

I admire the author’s courage to bare her soul in these beautiful poems. I used to write poetry myself, so I know the piercing feeling of sharing something from the very depth of your being that comes over you when you express yourself through poems. I guess I never returned to poetry, even after I started writing again, because of the darkness that would have come from under my pen if I had. You cannot lie in poems. Falsehood irreversibly spoils the words’ beauty, and readers always feel it. And you cannot take the certain edge out of the process of writing poetry. It is an integral part of it, without which the verses become empty shells.

In her poetry collection “Reflections”, Elena Carter shares her thoughts about the myriad of things important to all of us. Finding hope, fighting one’s fears, healing after life has broken you. Through her words, filled with sincerity and depth of understanding, the author offers her reflections, at the same time inviting the reader to seek answers to the questions she poses.

“When do we lose our wings?” I’ve been asking myself this question frequently ever since I’d lost too much and too many. Even though I haven’t given up, it still doesn’t mean that living with the feeling that something is lost forever is easy.

“I know for sure I’ll never run out of love.” These are the words that sustain me.

We share a similar background with the author, and I could feel it acutely reading her poems. It was a very special sensation that warmed my heart, and for that, I am grateful. After finishing the book, I was left with the wish for every person with a kind heart out there that their “All the might-have-beens and could-have-dones” would be outweighed by the glorious moments of “couldn’t believe my luck but it actually happened.”



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Reflections: A Poetry Collection