Phantasmal Flowers in The Eden Where Only I know

I won this in a contest and I am forever grateful that Black Sunflowers Poetry Press sent this to me! I went to school with one of their authors and really loved their book as well.

With Phantasmal Flowers in The Eden Where Only I know, I wanted more from each of these poems. All of them were very, very short to the point that I couldn't quite tell what the theme of the book was. The blurb says that this is meant to “distill the human experience through flora” but I wasn't always sure what human experience it was distilling. There are definitely some gems in here though, mainly when the speaker is curious and self pitying. For example, in “FlOwEr”, I loved the lines, “why am I blooming / yet no one sees me? / why am I smiling / yet nothing flows into me” (page 8). This poem in particular, and a few others with those interrogations, lead to me to believe that a lot of this is exploring a general feeling of disappointment or displacement. The speaker's life feels unsatisfactory or maybe even open-ended, which comes through metaphors like thirst, wanting to be sheltered from the sun, physically reacting to the changing of the seasons, etc. Flowers are also totally stationary and reactive to their environment, so I assumed this was a symbol as well. Overall, I think this concept is incredibly unique and I really just wanted the poems to be more extended and feel more connected to each other through more imagery or scene. In fact, I think this concept could be an incredible short story. Anyways, the cover is really beautiful and I also really loved the changes in capitalization/punctuation! Poetry is really subjective and I am no expert, so take my opinions with a grain of salt! There's lots to love here.