Love as an emotion is the most powerful thing a human being experiences in their lifetime. In any form, love is the most potent feeling, and everyone experiences all the other emotions that are by-products of this emotion at one point in time or the other in life. Dealing with those emotions is a challenge for many as some are too emotional while some are a little lesser. In her collection of poetry, “Love. Feel. Pain. Heal. Repeat,” published by Evincepub Publishing, Shilpa attempts to give words to those unspoken emotions that trouble the lives of many and those who feel they are the only ones going through those circumstances.
The readers would feel an instant connection with her work from the cover itself. The manner in which the author titles the book and the cover she takes are worth observing. The frequent usage of full stops somewhere implies how all the acts of love, feeling, pain, healing are all part of life and how these things happen with everyone. Keeping the background as black implies the neutrality and the universality of these emotions, which is more or less the same, and the way everyone feels is the same. This also suggests the work to be neutral to all genders and is not about being restricted to any particular group.
As the readers begin with the book, they understand that the work is not any ordinary collection of love poems or anything of that sort. It is far beyond which has the touch of love with the objectivity of reality. This gives the book a modern outlook, and it is not a far-fetched set of poems that are just an idealistic set. The poet declares that it may be about love, but it is also about being proud of a person’s ability to feel that way because not everyone is able to. This gives a message of positivity, and the readers are in tune with the author from the beginning.
It is interesting to note how the author keeps here poems of varying lengths and without any titles. The different lengths keep the poems away from the artificiality of the present day and show the emotions in their raw form without mixing or blending with anything else. The absence of titles may be suggestive of the manner of randomness in which emotions work or show up. They do not have any time or place or title or length; the author records them just the way they crop up. This raw display shows the poet’s courage to be vocal through her pen about the things that would otherwise remain unsaid. This pure showcase could be another point due to which the readers would enjoy the work.
The purpose of “Love. Feel. Pain. Heal. Repeat,” is not to inspire the readers to rise like a phoenix from the ashes, nor is it to make them feel sad about all they have been through. It simply is to accept things the way they are and how one person is. It is about appreciating one’s uniqueness because that is what differentiates one person from another instead of comparing with others and feeling sad or any other negative emotion. The most courageous act is to appreciate oneself for the things one faces silently, which forms the poet’s central focus in her collection.
“Love. Feel. Pain. Heal. Repeat,” is all about who has been through all these emotions at one point of time in their life or the other. No one is untouched by these emotions at different junctures, making the work relevant and universal to all age groups. For the younger ones, it is about understanding that they are not alone in the ship they sail, and for elder readers, it is about looking back to their experiences not with anger but with an appreciation for themselves for having the ability to feel that way. The poems’ conciseness and crispness can also be one factor that attracts the readers as they would find an objective representation of reality instead of an idealistic projection of all that is felt by a human being.
