Almost a Memoir


Poetry - General
124 Pages
Reviewed on 06/22/2022
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    Book Review

Reviewed by Carolina Restrepo for Readers' Favorite

M.C. Rydel answers one of the most asked questions, what would you do if you knew when you were going to die? He changes the rules; the storyteller only knows the month of his death, not the year. His ingenuity has brought forth an answer in the shape of poems where reality is portrayed from a different point of view, with different priorities in mind. Certainly, if you know your days are numbered many things will lose value and others will gain value. Which year is lived through all the way and which ones aren’t? Almost a Memoir is a collection of poems that not only deal with this constant face with death but also with loss, change, fear, oblivion, work, friends and family, and all the things that life has to offer, even Moth Suicides. Almost a Memoir is an atypical perception of life and all the tricks under its sleeve. “Truth replaces beauty and everyone knows exactly how everyone feels.”

While reading, I was sometimes confused, other times I felt related and seen by some poems, but isn’t that what life is all about? Some things will never be understood and others will feel like they belong to us. Uncertainty and change are the most constant things in our lives. Whether done consciously, I appreciate M.C. Rydel's cryptic approach toward life and what even the most trivial things mean in the end. Some of the poems are very personal and introspective, and others are as impartial and detached as can be. I never thought that combination worked well together, but this compilation of poems has demonstrated the opposite. There is a certain type of beauty in the combination of opposites, they cancel each other and also complement each other; it is confusing yet clear as day.