Idiot Verse by Keaton HensonBook Review (CC)

Hello everyone! I tried to do a pretty braid today but it just all fell out all at once so I. Guess we're just going for the ropey look. Today I wanted to do a mini review of a book that I just picked up and it is Keaton Henson's book Idiot Verse. My friend Karissa sent this to me just for funsies and she knows I love Keaton Henson so she just sent this my way and it was such an enjoyable read.

I really wanna get to talking about it but first, have to thank Karissa for sending this to me so thank you Karissa! I loved it! If you're unaware, Keaton Henson is a singer. I really don't know how to describe the genre other than, like, acoustic, very relaxing, soft but depressing music. It's what I play whenever I read or write or-- it's very contemplative and quiet and soothing music. He writes about relationships and love and heartbreak and being an artist and I think the reason why I love him so much other than the quality of his music is that he has severe social anxiety which prevents him from being able to play many concerts.

So first of all, he writes about anxiety in his music which just speaks to me because I have anxiety. He used to record his music in his room and he released it that way. So getting fame has made him a little bit uncomfortable. So the fact that he has released this and given us more, like, more things that I crave? I'm just ecstatic about.

So I read this in one sitting. All these poems are about relationships and London and his feelings and longing and desire and it's so amazing. I want to talk about my deep thoughts with these. I gave this book five stars.

Hand down. Loved it. So as you can see, haha, I put a bunch of tabs on the ones that I enjoyed. All of these are sticky tabs for poems that I liked a lot, which is a lot of them.

I just think he's a genius with his lyrics. The way that he can express something that's so tragic and just deliver in a way that you're just, like, punched in the heart; that's how I feel listening to his music and that's how I felt reading this. Some of my favorite songs off his new album are "The Pugilist," "No Witnesses," and "Alright," and if you like the lyrics and the style of those types of songs, then this book is really going to be your friend. His writing style is extremely, extremely neat.

Sometimes he'll refer directly to the person he's discussing in that poem and call her like, "My dear" or, "My love," or, "Darling," and it's like an ode to that person and you can just feel the longing that he has for this person or the heartbreak that he's experienced over this person. And it-- it just punches me in the guts. It's such a powerful book. I'm not even going to go through and tell you which of these were my favorites because it was like half of them.

I just adored this collection of poems. I do want to mention that the beginning page of this is a picture of him, and on this side of the page it says, "Your life is a book/ it is more than just the first and last page/ and it is mostly made up of and's and the's." He makes things so simplistic but in a way that makes you like, think and delve into his mindset. I have now become a fan of writing in books, so a lot of these stanzas i've underlined. It just makes me really, really think.

I think one of my favorite poems in here-- I love the poem "Regret Me." I posted that one on Snapchat and I was like, "This is literally warnette." But something that I was not expecting in this book and that made me so much more emotional about his writing is that it is interspersed with his drawings. Keaton had a graphic novel in 2012 that was limited edition called Gloaming. I found out about it too late I couldn't get a copy, but he is a very interesting artist who-- you can't really see that because the window is right by me. He has penciled in art in here that just makes it feel like this was his personal copy of his poems and he's just doodling around them.

And his art is a lot of the times incomprehensible, just sometimes lines or like this. I don't know that is but just the way that the pencil strokes are? It's just so meaningful. Like that sounds so stupid, I'm like, "Oh, the way that his pencil looks!" But in reality, like, I actually-- I can feel what he was feeling when he drew these and I can feel what he was feeling when he wrote these poems and the way that he can just transfer that emotion from his body and his soul to a page? And me, thousands of miles away, I picked this up and I feel that same heartbreak that he felt? I think he just has an extravagant talent for this. And I wish this was 500 pages long.

I'm gonna read a little bit from "Regret Me" because I think that's one of the most memorable poems I read. "Who watches while you dance my dear/who whispers softly are you well/and softer still in moonlit spell/i'm lonely my love, come and save me./Who listens to your collars turn/your sleeves drip red as arms and hands/reach desperate for escaping sands?/I'm lonely my darlings, don't break me." Just the way that he makes the rhyme and the flow of it and the imagery. Everything just works. It's not like modern poetry where it's just random skips in lines, but there's images and there's detail and there's crushing emotion packed into this.

I thought it was expertly done, will forever be a fan of Keaton. I'm dying to meet him or see him one day but I highly doubt that that's even in the realm of possibility at this point. If you're a fan of Keaton's music or if you just want poetry that really speaks to heartbreak and love and feeling emotions passionately, this is gonna be a great option. So I wanted to thank everyone for watching.

Hope you enjoyed this review! If you're a fan of Keaton or if you like poetry, let me know if you have recommendations! I don't know what you would recommend to me of Keaton's because I have all his albums and I. Love him, but yeah. Poetry recommendations? Let me know. Let me know if you have any thoughts, and until next time hope, you all enjoyed and I'll see you in the future.

Bye everyone!.