Leaves to Stay by Kristen Dunn

This book is full of Kristen’s memories.  It’s going to be a customer delight for the Readers to read them one by one just like opening a Pandora’s box.  She has started the book with Game of Life to end with She Grew.  The experience that everyone takes over the course of life!  This seemed very unique to me.

I am sure Kristen must be living or must have lived in Chicago because her poetry has all the minutest details of the City.  “Chicago, I did nothing wrong I played your rules I sang along good memories fade till they are gone I will disappear with them it won’t be long, as in The Game of Life and “Can you sit in the middle of Chicago without hearing a sound? Construction on every corner with the lake up ahead, can you sit in the middle of Chicago as in The Middle of Chicago are a testimony to it.

Her writings on life seem very apt and profound to me when I read her lines, “One step forward two steps back is this really where my life is at?  Sunny, warm, calm and free but then there is the moon’s mystery as in And so I stray.  “And now I am alive I live in this heaven of mine, don’t try to break me and stop my shine, I already know that it’s not my time let me be myself and I will be fine” as in Heaven suggest that finally she has found her own strength to move on in life and that nothing can stop her from doing so.  With every new experience, the less it matters, let the petals fall and let them fly free, I am traveling with my soul and that is all I need, I made it to the mountains I think I am really free” in her poem Mountains obviously talks about what it feels to be free after all the tribulations one suffers in life.  “Is there any life without Struggles?”  “Never” can be the best answer.  “Stabbing pain in my heart I think it was that way to start restless struggles lay deep within fighting myself and trying to win”

“I thought I was free from my past until a new one formed a cycle I thought had died had only been reborn” in her Reborn narrates a trajectory of the particular patterns once faces in life.  Every one of us goes through these patterns. I can much relate to her lines because I too, am no exception to this.  Eventually, I had to break the pattern to start afresh.

Her honest cries are touching and much felt which relate to her aspirations and ambitions in her lines, “My heart is crying my soul is dying I need to escape, I can’t sit still I need to move I can’t stay in one place there is too much to do” in I need to Escape.  I too, some day would like to escape and go to the mountains, just dreaming J

“How can memoirs exist without love?”  Some glimpses of her love life are seen in the book like scattered flower petals which let out fragrance as in The Beach, “My heart is heavy I am in pain I sit at the beach and hear the train.  It started at the lake with a notebook and a pen, the freedom I once felt I long to feel again”   Very mysteriously she writes, “The rain has stopped falling as the ground begins to dry I want you to join me as I begin to fly”.  In Gold, “I don’t understand your and my relation I guess that in order to heal sometimes we need separation” is your masterstroke!  Her experience of her love life is very amazingly penned in She Grew, “He was someone I was in love with, he even began as a friend but his love was a game and the game reached its end”.

Many more worth reading poems are Sunrise 2017, July, Business, Just Not Now, Chaos, How it all Began, Go Back, People Call Me the Sun.  I am sure Readers will enjoy this flowery basket of her memoires so honestly penned down.

“You see I am not just a body, mind and a soul, I am a bookshelf each book making me whole” as you wrote in To Amanda will stay with me for life.  Awesome lines here!!!  All the best, Kristen for this amazing wordplay throughout which was definitely an interesting read.  Hope your book reaches all the avid readers so that they enjoy it, and relate it to their lives.

Regards,

Shubhaangi Kundalkar

Author, Justaju-In Search of Life