Reviewed by Bernadette Acocella for Readers' Favorite

Edmund Industan and Neil Konrad Binayao’s poetry collection Healing Garden of Verses is divided into ten sections and uses haiku to tell the story of the creation of Earth, human beings’ rejection of God, and finally of the joy one experiences when he/she returns to Him. Parts two, six and ten all contain what the authors call “visual poetry” and have images of unique animals and situations that relate to the poem on the page. One nice picture is of two ants struggling with a large object behind a poem about asking God for help with our “loads.” Part four contains legitimate critique of a greedy and materialistic society, one of the wrongs we have committed against God that has brought us far away from Him. The book concludes with a celebration of surrendering to God’s will and returning to Him to find the peace we’ll never find in the material world.

The structure of the book, which starts at Creation and explains how one can get sidetracked from God before it describes the joy and pace of returning to Him, is very logical and represents a pattern that many Christians might go through. God is depicted as loving and ever-faithful, no matter our transgressions. I can understand and appreciate the flow of the poetry and the story of love that it tells. Though the visual poetry sections are well-conceived, there are also some questionable color choices that the authors make that could be improved to make these sections more powerful. As for the poetry, at some points I was unsure if some of the grammar, such as “I felt like a trash” and “It’s tree of knowledge,” was the result of poor editing or an attempt to keep the syllabic pattern of the haiku. While I like the idea of using poetry to tell a story about the healing power of God, the haiku became a bit much for me after a while. Though I have given this book four stars, other readers might certainly think it deserves five.