They look beautiful on the page and add extra layers of emotion. The spacing and formatting choices told a story in themselves. I loved the way all of these poems were laid out. I guess, in terms of substance, I can talk about it from two points of view: formatting and themes. I'll have to reread this book many times over. I felt like I took photos of almost every poem, and now they're stuffing my camera roll. I spent the entire hour I did my first reading taking photos of poems I wanted to remember. I haven't quite honed my skills at this kind of critique, but I can tell you this is a beautiful book.

I've never written about a book of poetry, so please bear with me. As a writer myself, I know the feelings of nakedness and exposure that the best writing creates for the author, and I can't imagine how much more intense it is when you know people are waiting to pick something apart for clues. It's something I appreciate greatly while also acknowledging the unique challenge of what she's doing. Poetry and lyrics are exposing like nothing else, and knowing where Lili is coming from as a highly scrutinized actress, it's amazing that she decided to share these pieces with us. Through all of them, though, Lili keeps a valiant degree of honesty and a shocking amount of vulnerability. She also notes, very similarly to Taylor Swift's letter about Folklore, that pieces come from lived experiences and others come from fictional places or exploring some kind of emotion in an exercise. She offers these in an attempt to do the same, and I think she achieves this remarkably well. In the intro, Lili prefaces the collection by noting that poetry has always given her solace in knowing other people felt the same specific emotions that she did. After the first couple poems, I was completely hooked. I think I had almost no idea what it would be like or the topics it would cover. I'm not sure what I expected from Swimming Lessons. I've been excited for the chance to get to see something completely created a controlled by Lili.

I've been a fan of Lili since Riverdale, and I've continued to be a fan of hers even when the show got a bit too ridiculous for me to keep watching every week. I've been anticipating Swimming Lessons so long that I can't believe it's actually in my hands. I've now read a graphic novel and a book of poetry. This is the first poetry book I've ever read in its entirety outside of Shel Silverstein, so I've checked off one of my reading goals for the year with this one.

Lili reinhart swimming lessons poems