Amicably Ever After (The Year I Grew Up)
Leah Ann Cevoli
[self-published], 2007
Reviewed by Kent Manthie
Amicably Ever After (The Year I Grew Up) is a slim volume of poetry written by Leah Cevoli, a native of Philadelphia who now makes her home in the land of fantastica, aka Hollywood. Amicably Ever After… is a collection of well-written poems, but sometimes painfully so.
The poetry in Amicably Ever After (The Year I Grew Up) seems to let loose the sadness, anger and loneliness that built up in her, following some not-so-great relationships to put it mildly. But there’s also a determination to not let the negativity from past relationships, from unfortunate events in her life, get to her or throw her into a depression. Instead, Cevoli channeled her angst into a positive outpouring that became Amicably Ever After (The Year I Grew Up). All in all, hers is a poetry of cathartic, metaphorical outpourings of the inner workings of a soul shattered by toxic relationships.
Leah Cevoli had been in Hollywood, like many other souls that end up in the land of surprise and fantasy, to pursue her dream of acting and had been working intently on that, while simultaneously going through a relationship that, well, sucked. She went through some tough times out here in L.A., working to support herself to pay the rent, buy the groceries, pay the bills, etc.
Leah’s been writing poetry on and off for most of her life and has quite the knack for putting her thoughts, aspirations, regrets and hopes into a lyrical mode.
But still, at the end of the day, there was something eating away at her, inside. She’d been left confused after that last relationship – whose fault was what? Was it the other guy/gal or was it me? She kept asking herself over and over again. Is there something wrong with me or is it just that I attract the worst of the worst? All those nagging questions that no one can really answer except oneself after a lot of inner discourse. So, Leah, as a way of simple self-therapy and as a way of expressing herself, played around with words, phrases, ideas, etc. and finally came back to her writing roots, then found herself glued to her notebook, her computer or whatever she used to create, racking her brain for just the right phrase to give it a more pleasing tone.
Reading Amicably Ever After… it’s so obvious that it is coming from someone whose heart has been broken more than once or twice in the recent past, which is most evident in the title poem [“Amicably Ever After”], a poem that sounds like she’s through wallowing in grief, self-pity or “what-ifs” and just comes out with raging verse that doesn’t have anything to do with feeling sorry for oneself, it’s more about taking back one’s life and independence instead of feeling like the broken part of a pair.
On the other hand, the two poems, “Dreaming” and “Dreaming Part 2” are poems that spell out what it is that this hardy soul is going to strive for in the future, which is a positive thing – it shows a little hope mixed with determination for what is to come, rather than dwelling on past betes noires.
Here’s hoping that Leah Cevoli has exorcised her past demons, with the publication of Amicably Ever After (The Year I Grew Up), that Leah’s driven out the worst of the pain weighing heavily on her mind and here’s hoping she’ll be back soon with a new sort of topic about which she can let loose her psyche again, but hopefully, the follow-up will be an entirely new concept – a new found happiness, the joy of expectation, the craziness of it all – life, people, circumstances, et cetera. Variety is the spice of life and melancholy love-sickness can only pique one’s interest for so long, unless one can identify with it, then it has a little longer shelf life. But please, let’s not contribute to the suicide rate, OK? Thanks! -KM