Dear Readers,

today I’m gonna write about broken hearts, love and affection as well as about a travel to find oneself and a home, where one belongs and feels safe. I’m gonna write about poetry and short stories.
Personally, I really love poetry. It’s that kind of literature, which hasn’t the focus on telling a long story but on what the reader feels while reading it. So let’s get right into „Lost Girls Go Everywhere“ by Azzurra Nox, a book full of feelings and emotions, a book of poetry and prose.

The book was published on 6th of October 2020 and written by the author and blogger Azzurra Nox. She was born in Catania, Sicily, lived in some European cities, Cuba and currently in Southern California. In the last years, she wrote several other books, like „Strange Girls: Women in Horror Anthology“(2020), „Bleed Like Me: Poems for the Broken“(2019) and „Doll Parts: Tales of Twisted Love“(2015).

Looking at the cover, the first impression was made: I was fascinated and interested. Considering the colours, it’s very simple, but at the same time, it radiates some feeling of wildness and independence. Firstly, it doesn’t seem to fit the content but rethinking everything it shows an independent woman, who experienced a lot of bad stuff, who needs horns instead of wings, to survive this world, who smokes, to feel better. All in one I like the style of the cover and what it could or could not mean.

But the important part is not the cover, it’s the content and the style of writing. The writing is separated into two parts: Part I contains the poetry and Part II the short stories written in prose. One page ahead of the Table of contents the author placed three sentences that spend hope. I think they are extremely important because the following poems and stories tend to be sad and hopeless, but these few lines at the beginning tell clearly: „You will find your path […]. Never give up.“
The Poetry in „Lost Girls Go Everywhere“ was varied: The poems appealed to every emotion I carry with me: I fell in love, I burst of hate, I got disappointed and surprised, I melt with the words and I even cried at one poem. Some poems are short, just a statement and some are filling pages. There were barely rhimes, but for me, good poetry doesn’t have to rhyme as long as the feeling is still transported.
The prose texts are written in a similar emotional style as the poems and carry on the love stories of a life full of wandering. Reading them was like getting more background information to the poems. Neither the poems nor the stories seemed to be chronological, which effected a perception of the texts as a collage of experiences from different lives, which makes it easier for the reader to identify with the persona.

Considering the whole work it’s to say that I recognised many references to music, to other famous literature, such as Moby Dick, Wuthering Heights and The Picture of Dorian Gray, and namings of other kinds of celebrities, such as Marilyn Manson and Marilyn Monroe. But all in one it is a rather melancholic book, with hope at the beginning, but not at the end. I enjoyed reading it and I’ll read it again, but not to upper my mood.

To judge poetry is always difficult, nearly impossible. How should one critic the most subjective thing in this world, as everyone made different experiences and feels just different? But I think the feeling that most of us have in common is heartbreak and that’s what the book is about, so grab an extract if possible and enjoy reading feelings put on paper.

Yours,
Aly