Review of Amber Renee's I Feel Like I’m Nothing: A Collection Of Poetry Pictures
November 4, 2020
I Feel Like I’m Nothing: A Collection Of Poetry Pictures
self-published
$4.99 (Kindle edition)
You can purchase a download here.
Reviewed by Phil Dykhouse
“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”
-Carl Jung
Amber Renee’s I Feel Like I’m Nothing: A Collection of Poetry Pictures is a highly ambitious collection that blends both the author’s poetry and visual art to create a surreal, yet intimate divulgence of her struggles with her mental and physical health. It is an intense self-portrait that doesn’t pull any punches as it delves into subjects such as melancholy, suicidal thoughts, illness, and death. Although the themes of the book can appear to be overwhelming, I believe the intent of I Feel Like I’m Nothing is not to push away, but to connect with people who may be suffering through the same challenges. It’s as if Renee is giving permission to read her personal diary with the hope that the reader can see themselves in it. It takes bravery to be so open and, on that front, Renee is a warrior.
In the book’s introduction, Renee tells the reader that she is a “layman’s philosopher” and “lover of all things Carl Jung”. These proclamations ring true as from one page to the next, Renee moves seamlessly through varying images that combine poetry, photographs, modern art, glitches, screenshots, and journal entries to create an amalgamation of her philosophical abstractions and distorted natures of self-image.
In fact, Renee’s struggle with her self-image is a major theme in the book. Even the title of the book is an exclamation of her uneasiness with who she is. I found that in lieu of knowing exactly how to define herself, Renee quite often compares herself to external forces because she is unable to identify herself in any other way. One of the best examples of this comes on page 55 where you find a manipulated photo of the author overlapped with the words “I’m quiet whispers,, skillful shivers & like the gleaming sheen of light off the sly spider’s web, I’m nothing tangible. Just glitter. Pretend.”
Throughout I Feel Like I’m Nothing, you’ll find many examples of Renee confronting her mental illness. With this line from page 16 she stands face to face with her distrust of existence, “...”the nausea” as Sartre coined it; to exist disgusts me. //my psyche is sick, it is nauseous, ego disgusted. I retch. I am human.” On page 37, embedded over a dark image of rain drops, you’ll find her lamenting her own idolization of her death, “I mourn myself.- // Like I’m already gone.” On page 61 she humbly describes her time in a Psych Ward where she reiterates the line “what are you thinking” over and over again.
Another central theme to I Feel Like I’m Nothing is Renee’s physical health. In the book you will find images of pills, IV’s, and hospital rooms that give way to a multitude of references to sickness and pain. On page 9, there is a poem entitled “IV Drip” in which Renee describes how the procedure of getting an IV drip has become almost routine, yet still feels completely invasive. On the very next page you will find a distorted image of a handful of pills. On page 66, you will find a poem within a warped social media post describing a vertigo attack, “...The body wracked of seizures by stillness then spinning, more stillness:”
Renee does an amazing job of showing you just how great of a mental and physical toll has been taken out of her throughout her life. Yet, you’ll find that she also uses that heaviness of to continue to dig further into herself to try to find peace. On page 32 you will find the line “I feel the I look out at me from a dark inner world where it knows nothing of image, nothing of word.” Through this and other introspections, Renee never quite finds the answers, but she has the capacity to keep asking the questions. Ever pushing back, she exclaims on page 49, “Whatever this is, let it grow tired of me soon.”
The last aspect of I Feel Like I’m Nothing I wanted to touch on is likely its most personal. In 2019, Renee’s mother passed away from cancer. On page 54, you will see an image of her mother’s funeral card. Starting on page 23, there are images of handwritten journal pages that Renee wrote before her mother’s death. These pieces are truly heartbreaking. On the first page she writes “As I write this, my mom is alive. I don’t know that I will survive reading this when those words are no longer true”. Renee goes on to say “I watch her scream She’s being ripped in half. I can only push. I can only cry. I can only try not to cry.”
The absolute honesty and emotion that Renee pours into these pages brought me to tears. To share such a painful loss in such an open way could not have been easy. However, from the first page of the book, Renee has completely bared her soul and laid all her cards on the table. That is what makes this collection so strong.
In a poetry landscape permeated with an abundance of traditional poetry collections, Amber Renee’s I Feel Like I’m Nothing stands out by being everything but traditional. By fusing her words with photography, art, and computer design, Renee has created a wholly unique take on the genre. Her brutal honesty about her pain and philosophical reasonings are a masterful pairing. I wanted to write about so much more, but this is a book that needs to be picked up and read. You need to read the words and see the images with your own eyes. That is the only way to truly feel its power.
In addition to her boundless creativity in print, Renee has also recently released lush and atmospheric spoken word pieces accompanied to music and sounds produced by the author herself. It appears as though Renee is determined to push her art, her audience, and especially herself beyond the boundaries we’ve found ourselves in. With Renee’s talent, it's a pilgrimage I highly recommend we take with her.
Philip Dykhouse lives in Philadelphia. His chapbook Bury Me Here was published and released by Toho Publishing in early 2020. His work has appeared in Toho Journal, Moonstone Press, everseradio.com, and Spiral Poetry. He was the featured reader for the Dead Bards of Philadelphia at the 2018 Philadelphia Poetry Festival.