Book Review: The Soul Charmer by Richa Saxena

The Soul Charmer

Poet: Richa Saxena

Genre: Poetry collection

Publisher: Half Baked Beans

‘The soul charmer’ is a lyrical journey of love, life, and nature. With this poetry collection, the poetess has thrown light on various aspects of love, the sublime nature of love and how the feeling changes at different levels of life. This is a collection of 32 poems. With simple and easy-to-understand language, the poetess has successfully reached out to the hearts of the readers and I can say this with absolute confidence because a non-lover of poetry that I am, I felt good while reading this book.

Love is profound! And so is the feeling conveyed through these verses. The poetess has done a commendable job in portraying all the emotions of the human mind. However, I wished for an equal distribution of poems (category-wise). Where most of the poems portrayed the emotion of love- love between a couple, Father’s love, mother’s love, etc, a sudden introduction of ‘The Beautiful Day’ doesn’t seem coherent.

Love is not always about ‘Happy ending’. It is about the depth and the intensity of the relationship between people. Written by a woman’s perspective, ‘The soul charmer’ is wise and eloquent. The poems do not fail to touch emotional switch.

With a subtle and soft cover, the title failed to impress me. Since love is the primary emotion captured through these verses, the title of the book could have been different. The use of vocabulary and language is simple yet influential. The poetess’ selection of words to describe the emotional turmoil, is remarkable. Most of the poems are free verses and do not follow any specific rhyme scheme.  

Be it love, romance, seduction, adultery or passion, the poetess successfully brings to her readers the truth of each experience. Her poetry speaks of entwined yet honest passion, fierce and hungry love, devoted yet distant love and unrequited and disloyal love. The overall appeal of the book is excellent.

Though I am not a poetry lover, this book was a good read, not because of the genre but because of the simplicity with which the emotions were expressed and fomented.

Best wishes to the poetess!