Lines by Leon: Poems, Prose, and Pictures by Leon Stevens – Review by Erica Shoebridge

Lines by Leon: Poems, Prose, and Pictures by Leon Stevens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a lovely set of poems and thoughts that are by turns irreverent, melancholic, meditative, and funny. There is a theme of self in many of them, and how our identity is shaped in relation to others. In “The Human Condition” he writes of how people cluster together both for company and as a way of defining themselves: “Relying on a self portrait by others / To tell them who they are”. There are several poems that I love because of the last line. As in Trust On Sports, where he discusses the futility of getting emotionally invested in sports games, and then in the last line negates it by writing “Maybe someday it all might change/ Because I kinda miss the joy”. It’s hard to describe here how that last little sentence made me smile and feel wistful as the poem took a sharp turn I wasn’t expecting. Enough dissembling from me, just read them and see!

Reviewed by @ericalorraine

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