Poetry has always given our lives special meaning. Maya Angelou painted a memorable, moving portrait of self-love in "Phenomenal Woman". Emily Dickinson's garden of scented, exotic flowers inspired the beautiful vision of "There is Another Sky". And the words of Kahlil Gibran are so deeply invested in the light of the human spirit that you feel anything is possible.
Daniela Hoeche, an amazing young poet from Germany, is headed down the same road of literary notoriety. Her book, SoulStrip, is one of the best books of poetry to arrive this year, and, one of the best I've ever had the pleasure of reading. In short, it's an unmistakable masterpiece.
Of all the themes and subjects the book addresses, love is the one that constantly pulls at the reader. Here is a great example from the title poem:
Words find an address
I can send them to
The soul connection
Between us two
My shades are gone
It's a soulstrip baby
It's on
Emotional, fearless, and simplistic. She's making an extraordinary expression of love, baring her soul for all to see. She wants you to know that her love is real. And it's that authenticity that runs throughout poems like "Music", "You" and "The Peace Inside of Us." But of all her poems, my favorite is "Motivational Rhyme":
We are emotional lifers / passionate givers,
Writers of feelings, builders of meanings,
Singing believers, blessed receivers,
People of choices, the future's voices
These four lines of the poem speak to the impact she wants her book to have on the reader, and, to what believes in and fights every day to make a reality. Soulstrip is for the global citizen whose dream is about connectedness and a healthy respect for all shades of humanity. As Hoeche explains, "Never before has the world been so close together, never before has the world been so visible."
If Soulstrip is any indication, this could be the first of many great works to come from Daniela Hoeche, an important voice for a new century of literary creativity.