Flux by Orion Carloto

Flux Reviews

• 
  Chuck

  Celebrity does miraculous things. Banal high school journal scribblings can suddenly become works of art for a 226k-subscriber YouTube star. I’m trying hard to not fault Carloto’s intentions here: heartbreak, loss, extreme emotion – these things can be the BEGINNING of inspiration but they are NOT in of themselves special. Or unique. Or particularly interesting when prosaically stated, page after page (“GET OVER YOURSELF already!” I cried out several times reading). No, the trouble is that when it comes to YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr et al. everyone is chasing celebrity. In that narcissistic un-world, it's all hollow presentation.
  
  And it shows. Flux suffers from a complete lack of grounding in the very medium it’s presented in. It’s a poetry chapbook that is completely oblivious to the most basic DO NOT's of poetry and it frustratingly comes off as ‘poetry for people who really aren’t into poetry but say they are.’ Nothing in this book would survive a creative writing 201 workshop but if you're important enough to have a YouTube channel, you don't need anything else.
  
• 
  Nat

  I discovered Orion Carloto’s writing this past summer in the
  Local Wolves magazine, which is just an all-around spectacular piece of work full of feminism and girl power. So when I later came upon the news online that Orion was releasing her debut poetry collection, it felt meant to be.
  
  
  
  “Read every word, experience every moment, and take in all the sorrows and revival that girls just like you have gone through. You aren’t alone.”
  
  (Above quote and illustration from
  issue 43.)
  
  Pulling inspiration from her personal adventures growing up, being in love, battling mental health, and the brutal pain of losing it all, she dug deep in her own woes and allowed those sorrows to fuel her writing. With original illustrations by artist Katie Roberts, Orion Carloto creates a dream world for the brokenhearted and paints a whimsical picture around the themes of love, loss, solitude, depression, sex, nostalgia, and unrequited romance.
  
  “I can’t wait till I see your face and my brain thinks I’m looking at a stranger.”
  
  However, I was discouraged to find an abundance of generic pieces that read less and less like poetry, as the book went on, and more like ordinary sentences structured to appear as poems. I was also a bit let down because I was expecting something along the lines of Rupi Kaur's
  milk and honey, meaning the collection would discuss both romantic love and self-love. I think Flux is a more worthy follow-up to consider if you're a fan of
  Lang Leav's work.
  
  Finally, on a much brighter note, that's not to say that there weren't noteworthy moments in here. I'd like to share a few of those enticing pieces:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  And thanks to my recent walk down memory lane, I got to discover
  this old gem buried in my playlist, which turned out to be perfect song while reading Flux.
  
  
  
  
  Source
  
  ARC kindly provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
  
  Expected publication: October 24th, 2017
  
  
  
  Note: I'm an Amazon Affiliate. If you're interested in buying Flux, just click on the image below to go through my link. I'll make a small commission!
  
  
  
  
  This review and more can be found on my blog.
• 
  Whitney Atkinson

  2.5
  
  ok i guess. i'm not in the right mood to read something this dark, so i skimmed the last few poems.
  
  most of these poems employed far too many cliché turns of phrase. there's very little creative imagery, and it reads soooo conversational. the language was so plain in some poems that it began to read like diary entries of a high schooler rather than a poem.
  
  only some were haunting and gorgeous and gave me chills, like this one:
  
  "But while she’s sleeping in your arms at midnight,
  I hope you look out your window and remember
  that my name will forever live in the stars.
  
  And I hope you’re reminded that no matter how hard
  you close your eyes to try and forget the way I held you close,
  you’ll never escape the moonlight.”
  
  also the art was gorgeous but i don't think it mentioned who the artist was. but i loved the art.
• 
  [S] Bibliophage

  Flux contains relatable sentimental one-liner quotes, poems and prose wrote by Orion Carloto. This collection shows grieving for a lost love and self-pityingly because of it. There are several poems that are I think the best ones, and these are: Delusional, Flesh and Bone, Moonlight, Haiku, Mirror Talk, Healing, Chronology, Wildflowers, Dream On, and Melancholy.
  
  
  As for one-liner quote, the remarkable one for me is, "You are a dream and I don't want to wake up." Vultures, on the other, is the most outstanding story I'd read in this anthology. Those who experienced recent breakup, lost their one great love or even unrequited love could relate themselves into the theme and content of this book.
  
• 
  Jenny

  I really had high hopes for it but I couldn't make it beyond 15 pages in. I like Orion, her style and energy, but I didn't enjoy this at all. I don't want to bash it like others have so I will just leave it at that.
  
  But hey- as writers sometimes we don't knock it out of the park on our first try. With growth and maturity, maybe her writing will evolve as well. I'm hopeful.
• 
  persephone ☾

  i usually hate contemporary poetry because it always feels like badly written Tumblr posts but this one wasn't that bad :) sure some of the poems were kind of shallow but others i really enjoyed ! 3.5
• 
  Siena Mirabella

  I absolutely adore this
• 
  mercy

  uh the illustrations were nice i guess
• 
  Caroline

  I read this almost fully in the aisle of Barned and Noble, along with skimming other modern poetry books. How did poetry degress into something that is SO digestable that you don't even need to swallow, it just slides down with no flavor and.. eugh. Perhaps I sound pretentious, trying to define "true" poetry when art is constanstly evolving but poetry is supposed to be more complex that this!!!! I've read Rupi Kaur and Lang Leave, both current poets that write nearly the same words as Carlotto. Really, who taught these people that poetry is spacing a sentence into three lines? A sentence that sounds pretty and has some meaning, but a sentence nevertheless. The way I feel about this prevailing current poetry is probably the way some people feel about contemporary art (which I love and could spend a chunk of a day analyzing and looking at btw). And who is publishing these people?? Can some editor tell them to make a poem that is longer than one sentene?? and has MULTIPLE MEANINGS. I've read very little poetry, but a lot of what I have, like Sylvia Plath, Robert Penn Warren, Anne Carson, e.e. cummings, Margaret Atwood, Mary Oliver, (somehow!!!) string together multiple lines and use multiple literary devices and create multiple meanings. Which is what poetry is supposed to be.
  Perhaps this is the commercalization of poetry, a medium that has been widely regared and respected as being something complex and confusing, if not tedious and pretentious. This type of poetry makes the entire genre more accesible, which is good, and opens up the door into poetry for people who may never turn the handle, which is GOOD. Futher, there is a whole slew of people who can identify with these poems, which is why they are so popular (this is full throttle sadgirlhours). They are often about being sad, and about bad romantic relationships, and people read them and think "Hey! I've also been sad about that before", giving them a chance to reflect and not feel as alone in the world and their woes. The poetry carries rawness, but the rawness is performative-- it is performative vulnerability, because the author knows what the audience wants.The poetry is presented personally, like a diary, but they melodramatize their woes, instead of being confessional and uninhibited.
• 
  ☄

  yikes. if carloto possessed even a single grain of self-awareness she'd realize how vapid and at times asinine this writing is lmao. it boggles the mind how influencers delude themselves into believing they're accomplished artists when in reality they're just conventionally attractive and have a young audience that for whatever reason worships every move they make 😬
• 
  adelia ☾

  i read this
  in 30 minutes and
  it once again proves
  spacing
  does not
  turn something
  into a
  
  
  poem
• 
  Julia Sapphire

  TW: Abuse and Self-Harm
  
  2.5 stars
  
  Most of these poems were nothing special in my opinion, but my favorites included:
  Crashing Cosmos, Flesh and Bone, Your Girl, Character Development and Russian Roulette.
  
  "Progress is dancing to the same song I used to cry to"
  
  "He was always 5 steps ahead of me,
  dreaming of the next place he could be.
  And while I tried running as fast
  as I could to catch up,
  hanging on to the little breath I had,
  I always stayed behind
  rag in hand,
  cleaning up the blood
  
  The rest of the poems I either thought were un-original or just rubbed me the wrong way kind of thing.
  
  For example,
  
  "please don't leave me"
  
  "If my tongue were a paintbrush, I'd drag it across the frame, starting from her neck..."
  
  "Allow me to crawl up inside your corpse and play a tender hymn with the keys growing along your spine"
  
  "Every woman who came after
  will see me deeply bedded inside of you"
• 
  rheanne ☽

  Hmm, maybe if I read it with a warm cup of coffee it would've been a better read..
  
  I feel like this "poetry" book was made purely with the intentions of getting back at her ex, except nothing went well. Instead of publishing her journal entries, jambled thoughts and "poems" - she should've just sent the dude her writings because they are suited towards him, kinda like asking him "what happened with our love?", making the reader feel distant, since I don't know their story. I couldn't connect to the writings one bit. I found it to be a monologue of her inner thoughts and feelings about a boy who she loved, who left her. HOW was this published for the whole world to read!! She should've sent him a copy and left it at that, yuck.
  
  If you expected a Rupi Kaur-esque poetry book DO NOT READ THIS. Instead, read Isabella Mente's "7,300 days". You'll actually get your money's worth.
  
  If you're a fan of her instagram page and youtube, then stick to indulging in her art via those platforms. Trust me, you'll get more out of it, and you can keep the $20 bucks in your pocket.
  
  The beautiful cover brings this book to two stars, instead of its deserving one-star rating. Very aesthetically pleasing. I'm very guilty of judging books by their cover, don't make the same mistake I made by buying this book. It will look great on your shelf, everything will be fine as long as you do not read this book.
• 
  el

  Closer to three and a half stars
  
  I just want to take a moment to appreciate the gorgeous cover on this?? I'm lov? Also, the even more beautiful art featured throughout?? Adored that.
  
  I love Orion’s youtube, and her Instagram is like, god-tier level excellent, so it was exciting to then read something of hers that, like most art, is as personal a thing as poetry.
  And so I've found another thing of hers to love – her writing; it's very atmospheric, and she creates some enchanting visuals. I read the majority of this in a day and enjoyed it very much, a couple of my favourites being:
  
  

  Wildflowers
  
  What started as a solitary rose swiftly turned into an untameable garden.
  
  You grew wildflowers in my body, and since you left, I’ve been attempting to pick out the thorns.
  
  It began as pure innocence, but now the stems wrap tightly around my lungs, making it hard to breathe.
  
  Like a seed, you are planted in me—
  
  Don’t you remember?

  
  

  Redamancy
  
  If my tongue were a paintbrush,
  I’d drag it across her frame,
  starting from her neck,
  down to her ankles,
  stroking along
  her every corner
  and every curve,
  just to prove
  to her that
  she is art.

  
  However, some poems made more of an impact than others, so although I was left with fond memories, I'm not sure how long it will stay with me.
  That's only me being picky though—I'd certainly recommend if it sounds like your thing— and I'll be looking out for anything else she might publish.
• 
  Irmak ☾

  "He ran on false hope and empty promises."
  
  
  a few sentences here and there were good, great even, but overall, for a poetry collection dealing with heartbreak, it was pretty underwhelming.
• 
  vicky

  another book i picked out randomly from the poetry section of the library because i thought it looked cool, which resulted in me reading close to 200 pages of exceedingly mediocre poetry consisting of single lines of empty clichés masquerading as entire poems, such as “i gave him the moon and stars, but all he wants is space”, “don’t get too close; i’ll turn you into poetry”, “you are a dream and i don’t want to wake up”, bookended by passable scribbles, only to finally reach the end and discover that the “poet”/“writer” is a youtuber and influencer like, oh. suddenly everything makes sense.
• 
  Ally

  3/5
  
  Personally, I was a huge fan of Rupi Kaur's milk and honey, and I hoped that Flux would fall into that category of simple, raw poetry. And Carloto does format some of her poems the way that Kaur does:
  
  where it is
  formatted like
  - this
  
  However Flux didn't have the same emotional effect on me as other works of poetry. A lot of the poems (as well as the prose, this book contains both) rang hollow. I felt as though they didn't bring anything new to the table, or they didn't awake in me a previously undiscovered emotion. Most didn't really strike an emotional chord at all, although the themes of heartbreak and life post-break up are relatively universal. I think that the poems themselves were very generic; I'd say about 90% of them felt like something I'd already read on tumblr, and the prose was littered with unnecessary adjectives and clichéd phrases. Hey, don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of wonky, vivid metaphors in prose (Jandy Nelson, I'm looking at you) but in the case of Flux they just didn't seem natural or rhythmic.
  
  "But Ally," you might ask, "why give it three stars instead of a lower rating?"
  
  And to that I'd say that this book had its wonderful moments. Some lines really popped out at me, really struck me in a way that made them memorable. Here is a favorite of mine:
  I gave him the moon and stars but all he wants is space.
  
  Another favorite:
  Character Development
  Progress is dancing to the same song I used to cry to.
  
  There were some other lovely lines in there as well, and the illustrations were gorgeous. Carloto was really at her best when she was at her simplest. Her shortest and least flowery poems ended up being my favorites. And it is a quick read, but don't go into it expecting the rawness of milk and honey, like I did.
  
  Flux is almost like poetry lite™, a way to dip your toes in without diving off the emotional deep end. But in my case, it left me feeling a little unsatisfied.
  
  I received an ARC of this book from netgalley in exchange for an honest review
• 
  Nada

  this is so repetitive.
• 
  Samantha

  Truthfully, I really liked this a lot. Orion has always been someone I loved from social media being she is very open and relatable. When I first found out she was releasing this gem, I was so excited! She would always post excerpts of poems she wrote and such, and I would always screenshot it because I loved it and didn't want to forget it. Now that she's released this collection, I have them with me to refer to whenever!
  
  There were some poems and writings that I didn't quite relate to, but a majority I read and was amazed by its brilliance how relatable it was. It was great and I hope that she continues to publish more collections in the future!
  
  My only bummer was that it was quite short -- I finished reading it in less than an hour, and I was hoping it would be a bit longer and last longer.
  
  Nonetheless, I did enjoy it and do recommend this collection of writings and poems to anyone interested in poetry and emotional writings.
• 
  Thomas

  actual rating: 2.5/5 (but felt more like a 2)
  flux by orion carloto | short book review for a short poetry book
  
  I've read this poetry book written by Orion Carloto last night in one sitting and I really thought I would be enjoying it but it turns out I wasn't a complete fan of it.
  
  This poetry book deals with separation, breaking up, grieving for a lost love and all the thoughts and emotions that are related to it.
  Overall, it was a good reading, I was probably just expecting more of it. I really liked the singularity of the drawings that sometimes contribute to the poems, and also enjoyed the photographs of the author's journal entries, but I guess it just didn't clicked with me.
  Some poems are indeed beautifully written, and we can feel the poet's strong emotions while reading them. What didn't clicked with me is that I prefer more general poems, what I mean by that is that while reading Flux, I felt like I was reading a diary filed with personal emotions without knowing the person herself, most of the time I felt like a complete stranger and it was hard to feel anything at some point.
  
  What I can also add to this review is that for me, and here is a personal thought, when I am reading a poetry book dealing with separation, and extreme emotions like this one, I truly expect more, and I was a little frustrated to be honest. I indeed felt the strong emotions that the author wanted to share, but it only felt like a first draft to me, I wanted her to work on these emotions to give them a bigger strength, I wanted to see more creative imagery, and I basically wanted to see and feel more.
  
  I also was a little bit surprised by the length of this poetry book, it is indeed 180 pages but is actually 90 pages long, the poems are only written on one side of a page and are most of the time only a sentence long. The drawings are very few as well, I first thought they will contribute to each poems but they didn't, and when it was the case, I must admit that it was beautifully done.
  
  I will still recommend this poetry book to people who need a very LIGHT and EASY poetry book dealing with the grieving for a lost love and personal feelings that are related to it (that may or may not clicked with YOU)
  
  
  
• 
  ellie

  if i had to describe this book in one word, it would be fluxrgettable.
• 
  daisy

  orion i really love you but this was NOT it
• 
  Christian Savin

  Dream On
  
  Infatuated with my own desirable imagination,
  I turned myself into a victim of my own romanticization.
  
  I enjoyed this way more than I expected, which is weird, because this felt more like an anthology filled with diary entries and short intimate thoughts jotted down on whatever pieces of paper were at hand, than a collection of poetry. What made me enjoy Carloto's writing so much was perhaps her way of conveying raw emotions into simple but effective verses and prose.
• 
  Sophia Michelle

  With the mindset of reading this as poetry book -which is what it’s claimed to be- I was pretty let down. It has no structure and is more of a diary entry. By looking at it as if I had discovered someone’s diary and dared to read it, I enjoyed it much more. Most of the time I loved the vulnerability of it. It felt like I was intruding in the deepest parts of her experiences and heart. In that sense, it was interesting and captivating. Though my expectations were not met, I thoroughly enjoyed relating to how she felt at times, and the rawness of her experiences.
  
  “be still my dear, let your body melt into mine... I crave nothing more than to become one with you.”
  
  “I’d be lying straight out of my teeth if I told you that I adjusted the collar of your shirt only because the ends were a little crooked. I used that as an excuse just to be able to touch you again. My hands have never been so familiar with a place than the bend of your neck.”
  
  “...I just wish I would have known when the last time was going to be the last time. I would’ve kissed you longer, held on tighter, I would’ve slept in just to sleep next to you a little while more.”
• 
  Marta :}

  I want to thank Netgalley and the publisher for granting my request to read this book. This hadn't influenced my review/rating in any way.
  I think this is a case of 'it's not you, it's me'. This book reminds me a lot of Lang Leav's books, but it's not as good, it lacks originality and it didn't make me feel anything. For a reason or another, I didn't connect at all with the feelings the author was trying to inspire. I didn't feel the intensity of the grief over losing an important relationship, I felt nothing. Sadly, this book was not for me. The illustrations were really beautiful and the writing was alright, but it lacked spark. It felt like any other break-up poem collection...
• 
  Aleksandra Kusnierkiewicz

  I liked it
  not.
  
  (Can I publish now?)
• 
  maida ♡⁷

  “Gray Matter
  
  I’ve gone mad.
  It’s been 26 days since you’ve said goodbye, yet you continue to lurk
  within every existing corner of my mind. I tried convincing myself
  that with each passing day it would become easier, but at no chance
  has it ever. It’s been 26 days without hearing your voice; you haven’t
  even called to check up. I’ve ripped at my hair, drove my palms deep
  into the sockets of my eyes, thrashed my temples
       over
      and over
      and over
      again
  and you’re still there.
  
  
  
  Skin now embedded underneath the tips of my fingernails from
  digging into my cheeks just to get you out from underneath.
  Day-old bruises resting soft upon my neck from the bones of my fingers attempting to grasp a better understanding as to why you thought this would help us.
  I’ve howled at walls until my screams grew empty:
  it’s an unbearable loss,
  an unknown despair.”
  
  2.5ish
  It’s a diary more than a poetry collection, but still quite heartbreaking. I’ve followed Orion for years and I was a tad disappointed by the amount of cliches in this. anyway.
  
  22. A book you have high expectations or hope for (and they weren’t met)
• 
  sunny maria

  3.75 ⭐️ — Flux reads not so much as a book of poetry in the traditional sense, and more as a collection of beautifully written journal entries, heartfelt love letters and thoughts. I was familiar with Orion's writing when I dived into the book so it didn't bother me much as I knew what to expect and I still enjoyed Flux a whole lot and thought it was beautiful and honest. But if you're someone who likes poetry in the traditional sense this book might not be for you. I'd recommend it to people who like reading journals & the new wave of poetry (e.g : milk & honey) instead. I love Orion and I love Flux but i'm hoping that her next body of work will feature more elements of poetry (rhymes, meter, rhythm, alliterations, etc)