Shattered Echoes
Concerned with abuse and healing, the revealing poetry collection Shattered Echoes catalogs personal psychological scars in a visceral, pleading manner.
The specters of past traumas are filtered through the hindsight of recovery in Luna Schadeck’s unflinching poetry collection Shattered Echoes.
Concerned with abuse and healing, these revealing poems catalog personal psychological scars in a visceral, pleading manner. They commune with individual themes in separated sections, including themes of love, life, and loss and of a “shattered mind.” They progress toward greater retrospective positivity than whence they began. Indeed, in “Whispers of Hope,” the poems’ acerbic exteriors give way to blossoming confidence—a bit of catharsis following a bevy of tough allusions.
Haunting moments arise in poems like “Mother Dearest,” wherein traditional poetic forms and techniques are eschewed in favor of avalanches of caustic imagery:
When the demons came, they consumed me
You let them
So willingly
So easily
Even if you were blind to it all
I begged
For your help
For you to see
I wasn’t okay
I needed help
Such blunt approaches result in a sense of heaviness, punctuated by rare glimpses of potential resolutions. Often, the darkness of the poetry threatens to take the book over. Still, the acceptance of the weight of trauma percolates in pieces including “Perpetual,” wherein a candid confirmation of the cycles of forgiveness and spiritual restoration is introduced. Clichés arise in references to heaviness in the chest, blurred vision, a throbbing head, and a pounding heart. In response to these emotional and physical onslaughts, the poem is direct:
Take a breath, Love
It’s only another panic attack
Creeping light in the closing pages is accompanied by a sense that the speaker is becoming unburdened by the past, emboldened to seek out silver linings amid thunderclouds of pain. “Acceptance,” for instance, celebrates:
They love me for me
And that is enough
They’re proud of me
In ways you never could be
In such moments, the notion of mere survival is replaced by expressions of determination to live a stronger, happier life. Past pains are named, and ownership over their effects is taken; shadows are recast. Still, while each unguarded stanza in the text represents the clear processing of lingering emotions and the effects of past events, the rawness of the lines precludes wide audience involvement, limiting the ultimate reach of this dutiful, affecting body of poetry to its speaker alone.
An autobiographical exercise in self-acceptance, the poetry collection Shattered Echoes is made up of posttraumatic reflections that are recorded with rugged optimism.
Reviewed by
Ryan Prado
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
