In her second book, Ninety Days, author Chyenne Daley shares a collection of poems about tragic love life. Broken down into six stages: Attraction, Intimacy, Uncertainty, Betrayal, Nostalgia, and Healing. Through her poems Daley depicts the good, the bad, and the ugly side of falling in love, facing the denial and gaslighting of a cheater, and recovering from the heartache and mental problems that can arise from a toxic relationship.

These collections of poems are graphic and depict a powerful truth of what some women and men go through when facing a cheater; worse, a toxic cheater. Daley uses very few metaphors in her poetry. Her poems are very blunt, direct and there is almost no room for misinterpreting her words. “There was always red flags, There is always red flags.”

At the beginning of Daley’s book, the poems began with rhythm. As I continued reading her collection, the poems slowly lose rhythm and became more symbolic. For example, “I remember when I saw those eyes, I knew they were for me, I declared you my own before you even got, the chance to know me…” The beginning of this poem has a decent rhythm to it, but by the end: “Protecting myself such ideas was, Essential despite the potential bliss, I could have eaten you up almost immediately, But I told myself to wait.” The poem’s end is abrupt with the change in rhythm, and I was pleasantly surprised by the change of pace.

I liked that the author didn’t stick to one way of writing poetry, instead she jumped from strong symbolism without rhythm or focus on a balance between rhythm and symbolism. This leaves the author’s poetry open for interpretation and unpredictable. In the section of Uncertainly the author looks to have shifted perspective from first POV to second POV. Where the author used “I” and “me,” Daley uses “You.” “…Will you take it as a sign to proceed, Will you risk the danger…” I do not know if this is intentional, but it threw me for a loop. I was not expecting this change in POV so abruptly. I did have to take a step back to reread the poem again but it didn’t take away from the meaning of the poem. I found Daley’s poetry deep and I easily connected to the emotional content.

Ninety Days is an emotion invoking read that will have you wanting more. This thought-provoking collection of poetry will have readers experiencing a wide span of emotions.

Pages: 44 | ASIN : B09PZF462P