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Write Fully and Freely
Purple Summer, Gray Fall is an eclectic blend of poems ranging from themes of warmth, youth, and desire to introspection, loss, and renewal. What inspired you to write this particular collection of poems?
Thank you! This book began as 1-2 poems and random thoughts I wrote during and after a particularly impactful romance. I didn’t plan for Purple Summer, Gray Fall to become a book, let alone a book that I would publish. Not long after this romance, I went through a huge emotional journey, including and most notably, the start of my writing career. I began writing and unpacking things, which led to more writing. Then, synchronistically, the title Purple Summer, Gray Fall came to me one day. That’s when I knew I had to create a book. This book allowed me to understand and process that time period, learn more about myself, and explore and expand creatively. I realized I had to publish this book because, as an artist, there is nothing more urgent than to share what moves you.
Were there any poets or other writers who influenced your work on this collection?
Absolutely. The late Nikki Giovanni is my favorite poet of all time. The late Toni Morrison is my favorite author, and I’m also a huge fan of poet Marie Howe. Collectively, they have inspired this book as their work is frank and sharp, full of imagery, emotion, connection, and courage. They are a source of strength and commitment for me to write fully and freely. I honestly can’t do justice to describe how influential these three women are to my work as a writer, but I’m glad I can pay homage to them here.
How do you approach writing about deeply personal or emotional topics?
It wasn’t easy initially, but it was much harder for me not to go deep with this book. Purple Summer, Gray Fall could have had a vastly different tone. I scrapped almost half of the original poems because they were ok and fit, but they didn’t feel authentic, and they didn’t make me proud. I made a choice and decided to write free of external pressure, and once I did, the rest of the book came together pretty quickly. It was very exciting. I knew the excitement and pride I felt from writing from a place of authenticity was and is the reason why I am a writer. I’m not aiming to be controversial or deeply personal, but I’m sticking to my decision to write for me and no one else, letting whatever needs to come out be free to do so.
Can we look forward to more work from you soon? What are you currently working on?
Absolutely. Poetry is my favorite genre, and I’m working on my 2nd book now, no title available! I’ll share that the collection will explore my past relationships. But I also plan to write fiction, plays, and screenplays as I have started drafting quite a few projects. Stay tuned for updates by following me on Instagram @writeaway_selena.
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Poetry Thrives on a Mystery
What We Hold No Longer is a collection of poems that circle around memory, aging, identity, and the haunting void that lies beneath it all. What inspired you to write this particular collection of poems?
I’ve recently become an avid reader of psychoanalyst Adam Phillips. Last year, one of his books introduced me to Jacques Lacan. Specifically, how our subconscious impacts language, and in turn, how we use language shapes desire. For a poet, what could be more delicious to explore? Ineluctably, even mentioning Lacan brings up his theories on the Void (The Thing) and religion. This, in turn, led me to Lacanian scholar Richard Boothby (Embracing the Void). Along the way, I also read a book by Phillips on our ambivalence towards transforming our lives (On Wanting to Change). Transformation is a particularly important topic at this stage of my life. What I did not anticipate in reading this book was the evocation of so many memories. As a pediatric psychoanalyst, Phillip’s description of childhood, particularly the excruciating years of adolescence, flooded me with things I’d long forgotten (eg, seeing my grandfather’s corpse at age 9, the inchoate sense of frustration, and seeking revenge on my parents’ reputation with a can of red spray paint, etc.).
Can you share a bit about your writing process? Do you have any rituals or routines when writing poetry?
I’m trying to understand my writing behavior. I appear to have a natural rhythm, whereby I’ll write a dozen poems over a month or two and then go silent for just as long. During the quiet months, I read more and pay attention to what I see and listen to: all the things popping up as thoughts and feelings. The poems “The False God’s Lullaby” and “New Year’s Day” were brief glimpses of people, just a few moments of an image that resonated deeply, and unexpectedly.
What moves me from outside triggers something poignant nesting deep inside: “The I of my other who moves silently with me” (The False God’s Lullaby). Also, I love editing. Paul Valéry once said: “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.” I think he meant you can always refine and improve a poem. I try to limit my revision window to six months. Once a poem reaches structural stability (ie, I know what I want to say and the confines to say it in), I put it away for several days or weeks at a time. It’s important to understand that during initial composition, the poem’s neural map is being built using high stores of neurotransmitters. This is how we learn. However, it also prevents us from seeing inherent weaknesses when we’re still trying to get our thoughts written down. Taking a break for days or weeks reduces neurotransmitter stores. This removes the blinders to our writing, so we can see problems more readily and find better ways to say what we’re trying to convey.
How do you approach writing about deeply personal or emotional topics?
I think it is important during initial composition to just let things rip, because that is likely to be the most truthful. However, there is a balance to be struck. I’m reminded of a phrase from the Upanishads: “The path to salvation is narrow. It is as difficult to tread as the razor’s edge.” I view confessional poetry as an attempt to achieve psychic salvation. To shy away from powerful emotions creates a sense of falsity impossible to ignore. Yet, in the passion of writing, we can also say too much. Poetry thrives on a mystery, on what is left unsaid. That’s part of the art form I’m still working on improving.
How has this poetry book changed you as a writer, or what did you learn about yourself through writing it?
I have the sense in writing What We Hold No Longer that I’m beginning to mature as a poet. I’m not sure anyone else would agree. But there was something about the Lacanian cycle of poems that shifted my writing in a way I haven’t fully grasped. At this moment, I can’t imagine writing anything more profound or better composed than those poems. Time will tell. Every book I’ve written so far has enriched my sense of self and given me a sense of being more at peace with myself. Something that had eluded me before I’d written The False God’s Lullaby.
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Such topics have been the foundation of his poetry explored in his previous works and have been expanded upon in “What We Hold No Longer.” As in his other works, poems are grouped together in themes. These themes approached from a deeply psychic perspective and include: personal transformations throughout life, existential encounters with “Nothingness,” the rise of fascism, loss, and the realm of an interior life (both our conscious narratives and our river of unconsciousness). What Gedaliah refers to as “the I of my other, who moves silently with me” (The False God’s Lullaby).
The poems in this current collection maintain characteristics that reviewers of his previous works have consistently noted. That “Gedaliah seamlessly blends philosophical depth with artistic expression, offering a deeply reflective journey through identity and human complexity, striking a perfect balance intellectual exploration and emotional resonance.”
Amethyst
Amethyst is a hauntingly beautiful tapestry of poetry that weaves together identity, pain, rebirth, and the search for meaning. Divided into chromatic sections named after shades of purple, each representing a facet of human experience, the book feels like an odyssey through the inner worlds of selfhood and survival. It moves from loss and trauma to reclamation and transcendence, painting scenes of queerness, masculinity, intimacy, and existential ache. Every poem feels like a fragment of a larger confession, tender yet defiant, fragile yet ferociously self-aware. Author Fernando Rover Jr.’s voice is raw, rhythmic, and unapologetically human, like someone whispering truth through a cracked mirror.
Reading this book shook something in me. The language hits hard, sometimes uncomfortably close. There’s this honest grit in how Rover writes about love and pain, as if he’s bleeding on purpose to show that healing isn’t always graceful. Some lines feel like quiet prayers; others explode with profanity and rebellion. I love how he blends vulnerability with resistance, how “Problem Child” snarls right before “Father Hunger” breaks your heart. There’s a rhythm here that doesn’t care about convention. He’s not writing poetry for classrooms or critics, he’s writing to survive. And I felt that. The work feels alive in its contradictions, full of sadness and rage, yet bursting with this strange hope that we can build beauty from our bruises.
But what struck me even more was how Amethyst feels like both a mirror and a map. It asks hard questions about who we are when the world makes us feel unworthy. Sometimes it feels like a séance with the self, a way of calling lost parts of you back home. I caught myself rereading lines just to let them sting again. The collection is fearless in its queerness and in its refusal to make trauma tidy. There’s humor in the mess, too, and flashes of warmth that feel earned.
I’d recommend Amethyst to anyone who’s been cracked open by life and wants to believe that brokenness can still be beautiful. It’s for readers who crave raw emotion and unfiltered truth, who don’t mind getting lost in someone else’s chaos to find their own calm.
Pages: 67 | ASIN : B0FX9F4Y41
The Backyard Peace Project
The Backyard Peace Project, compiled by Cathy Domoney, feels like a woven quilt of human experience stitched together with courage, pain, and healing. Each chapter comes from a different voice, yet they all hum the same melody of self-discovery, resilience, and love. From psychic awakenings to stories of grief, motherhood, and self-acceptance, every piece pulls at something tender inside. The narratives are raw and deeply personal, sometimes almost uncomfortably so, but they carry an undercurrent of light that keeps the pages turning. It’s not a book about perfection. It’s about peace found in the middle of mess and meaning drawn from the fragments of ordinary lives.
Some chapters hit me harder than others. Alice Terry’s account of her psychic gift and the fear that shadowed it as a child made me pause and think. Cathy and Skye Domoney’s mother-daughter dialogue about inherited trauma and forgiveness touched something familiar, that ache we all have for connection that doesn’t wound. And then there’s Gretchen Holmes, whose story of learning to love herself harder when everything hurt, felt like an echo of what many of us need to hear but rarely say aloud. The writing across these stories is conversational, imperfect, and real. It pulls you close instead of performing for you.
What I loved most was the honesty. These writers are trying to connect with the reader. There’s this feeling of being seen through their words, even when the subjects are heavy, like grief, illness, loss, and shame. I found myself nodding, sometimes tearing up, other times smiling at the resilience that sneaks through in small moments. The tone is hopeful without being forced, spiritual without preaching. A few stories reiterate lessons about self-love and empowerment. You can sense that every contributor truly believes in the peace they’re offering.
The Backyard Peace Project feels like a gentle nudge to look inward and to see our scars as invitations instead of flaws. It’s not just a collection of essays; it’s a movement of voices reminding us that healing happens in community. I’d recommend this book to anyone walking through their own transformation, anyone craving connection, or anyone who just needs to be reminded that there’s light even in the cracks. It’s for people who want to feel rather than analyze, who value stories told from the heart more than those crafted for applause.
Pages: 278 | ASIN : B0FSQWQ1GZ
A Wave Without a Shore
Verde Mar’s A Wave Without a Shore is a collection of cosmic, romantic, and deeply introspective poetry that travels across galaxies of emotion. It’s the second in the Entangled Universes Trilogy and feels like an odyssey of the human heart stretched over light-years. Each poem blends science and soul, love and starlight, until the line between them vanishes. Through Sol, Andromeda, and beyond, Verde Mar crafts a journey that explores love as both gravitational and spiritual, binding beings across time and space. The book is full of tenderness and ache, and its language, though celestial, often lands close to home.
Verde Mar writes in a way that’s both fragile and fierce. The imagery burns with suns and oceans, yet it’s anchored by something deeply human: loss, longing, wonder. I caught myself rereading lines just to feel them again. Sometimes the poems seem to talk to each other, echoing themes of light, rain, and rebirth. It’s a bit like jazz; it improvises, loops back, and finds new notes in familiar chords. I liked how the poems moved between intimacy and infinity, how they made small moments, like a look or a kiss, feel as vast as galaxies.
At times, I felt a kind of dizzy awe, like I was reading the diary of a star in love with the universe. There’s a hypnotic rhythm here, but also melancholy, an awareness that love, no matter how eternal it feels, still has to live inside the temporary. Some pieces are so intimate they almost blush on the page. Others zoom out, showing humanity as one brief flash of light in a cosmic sea. Verde Mar’s voice is warm and unguarded, yet his language carries a quiet precision that feels earned. The blend of scientific metaphor with emotional truth works beautifully most of the time, though in a few spots it drifts into the abstract. Still, the overall effect is spellbinding.
I’d recommend A Wave Without a Shore to readers who love poetry that makes them both think and feel, especially those drawn to the stars and the soul at once. It’s for dreamers, musicians, lovers, and anyone who has ever looked up at the night sky and felt something stir inside. The book doesn’t just ask to be read, it asks to be experienced.
Pages: 206 | ISBN : 978-1837945597
The Savior and the Shadow Queen: A Fantastical Tale Told Through Sequential Poems
The Savior and the Shadow Queen is a story told through poetry, unfolding in layers that mix fantasy and raw human emotion. It begins as a mythic tale of Eselli and Nabseatsi, two friends who set out to defeat a terrible enemy called the Shadow Queen. Their world feels ancient and mystical, full of prophecies, weapons, and dark magic. But as the story progresses, that fantasy begins to fade, and the truth emerges. Eselli is Leslie, a young woman living in the real world, grappling with grief, guilt, and the haunting weight of loss. The Shadow Queen becomes something much deeper than an external enemy; she is the darkness inside us all, the reflection of our pain and self-hatred.
McAfee writes with such openness that it’s hard not to feel what Leslie feels. Her pain, her confusion, her desperate hope for healing, it all comes through in the rhythm of the poems. The fantasy world works beautifully as a metaphor for mental illness and self-discovery. I loved how the story shifts from myth to memory, from sword and prophecy to hospital rooms and recovery. That transition hit me hard. The writing itself is simple, almost deceptively so, but it carries deep emotion. It’s the kind of poetry that doesn’t need fancy words to make you feel something, it just does. The pacing feels natural, the imagery vivid, and the emotions raw enough to make you pause and sit with them.
I could feel the compassion in McAfee’s voice. The book doesn’t wallow in sadness, even though it’s born from it. It offers forgiveness, for oneself, for others, for the past. I appreciated that McAfee didn’t sugarcoat the pain, yet she gave it meaning. The real-world sections are written with quiet strength. There’s hope tucked between every line, and I found myself rooting for Leslie as if she were someone I knew. The author’s choice to end the book with a direct message to the reader was perfect. It felt intimate, like a friend reaching out to say, “You’re not alone.”
I’d recommend The Savior and the Shadow Queen to readers who loved The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Both books explore inner transformation through journeys that seem external at first but reveal themselves as deeply personal. Like Santiago’s search for his treasure, Leslie’s quest to defeat the Shadow Queen becomes a metaphor for finding meaning after loss. But where Coelho’s story leans on destiny and spiritual discovery, McAfee’s feels more grounded in real emotion like grief, guilt, and the slow rebuilding of self-worth.
Pages: 102 | ASIN : B0CH411ZSP
AmerAsian: My Journey to Becoming Whole as a Mixed Korean-American
Kimberly McAfee’s AmerAsian is a heartfelt collection of poems that moves through childhood pain, cultural confusion, and the long climb toward self-acceptance. The book unfolds in three sections: The Beginning, An Emotional Journey, and Sweet Self-Acceptance. Each poem reads like a small window into McAfee’s soul. Through vivid imagery and references to Korean folklore, mythology, and family memories, she traces her path as a biracial woman learning to embrace both halves of herself. The voice is deeply personal, sometimes tender, sometimes raw, always honest. By the end, what began as a record of struggle becomes a love letter to identity, belonging, and transformation.
Some poems stung with their simplicity, like Monsters Within and My Collection, which capture the ache of growing up different in a world that craves sameness. Others, like A Bittersweet Return and Dokdo, filled me with quiet awe, showing how home can be both a place and a feeling. McAfee’s words don’t hide behind complexity. They’re plain, heartfelt, and striking because of that. The mix of personal reflection and mythological imagery made me pause more than once.
What stayed with me most was her voice. It’s gentle yet unflinching. She doesn’t pretend the road to self-love is easy. She admits to doubts, to shame, to hoping that a plane ride to Seoul might fix what was broken. It didn’t, and that honesty hit hard. When she finally finds peace in her own identity, the relief is contagious. I loved that she never forces resolution. Instead, she lets acceptance come quietly, like a sunrise after a long night. The rhythm of her poems felt natural, unpolished in the best way. There’s a vulnerability in that, a truth that can’t be faked.
I’d recommend AmerAsian to anyone who’s ever felt like they didn’t fit anywhere. Mixed-race readers, immigrants, or anyone searching for self-understanding. It’s a mirror for people who’ve lived between cultures, between expectations, between who they were and who they’re becoming. McAfee’s writing may be simple, but her emotions run deep.
Pages: 60 | ASIN : B0BZSK5W6F
Fight For What Matters
American Entropy is a collection of poetry that swings from political outcry to spiritual yearning, from queer love to existential doubt, and ignites readers’ desire to fight for what matters. What inspired you to write this particular collection of poems?
It was largely just paying attention to the news and seeing how every day, Trump is violating the Constitution, trying to force universities and museums to adopt right-wing propaganda and treat it as fact. Like all fascist authoritarians, Trump hates it when truths that contradict his lies proliferate, so I felt it important to do my part to tell those truths.
Doing it in a way that makes readers want to fight for what matters, rather than just dwelling on the darkness of modern American life, was important to me too, because if you don’t focus on what we still have, it becomes all too easy for people to give up.
The poems about love, metaphysical, spiritual topics, and queer love are all just examples of me writing what I know.
Your poetry tackles deeply emotional and politically volatile topics while also touching on hope for the future. How do you approach writing about deeply personal or emotional topics?
“Power through and write what’s true,” like it says in the poem “It’s Not Too Late.” I just get it out onto the page as accurately as I can before giving myself a chance to question how honest is too honest. I feel like if I’m too reserved in writing my poetry it won’t be as relatable, and the reader will be able to tell I’m holding something back, and it won’t foster empathy as much as I hope my work does by being unflinchingly honest.
How has this poetry book changed you as a writer, or what did you learn about yourself through writing it?
This book really crystalized for me that poetry is an important type of resistance, which is something I think my work has always been when it comes to fighting heteronormativity and homophobia and other bigotries, but this is the first time I’ve dedicated so much of any one poetry collection to raging against one corrupt administration and detailing all the ways it’s trampling our rights and waging war against the American people.
I’ve learned about myself that I really just don’t give up no matter what, and I can help others not give up either.
What is one thing that you hope readers take away from American Entropy?
That this isn’t normal, the way Trump is shredding the Constitution and speaking to our worst natures, and the way Republicans in Congress and conservative Supreme Court justices are complicit in enabling it. That it’s bigoted Nazi fascism, and we don’t have to just roll over and take it.
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Through explorations of the metaphysical, religion, and relationships, the poems delve into both darkness and the light born of efforts to expand human consciousness. Despair is given unflinching witness, making the discovery of hope all the more profound. And love—raw, imperfect, and essential—is celebrated as a balm for our plugged-in yet detached modern lives.
If you’re disillusioned with an America sliding toward fascism and the strain it places on relationships, American Entropy may reignite your fire to keep fighting for what matters, keep loving, and hold faith in something greater than ourselves.
LITERARY TITAN 