By: Anthony F. Rando 
Publisher: AuthorHouse 
Publication Date: June 2010 
ISBN: 978-1-4490-9991-6
Reviewed by: Eloise Michael
Review Date: July 2010

In A Book of Poems: The Inner Soul, Anthony Rando writes about love, fear, and loss, subjects that have moved authors for as long as people have been writing poetry. Here Rando shares his deepest feelings, exploring them through metaphor and simile. The voice of the poet is earnest throughout this collection. Readers will feel as though Rando wrote the poems in the midst of the intensity of feeling that he describes. They are raw and honest, holding back no emotion; they are love and longing in real time. The author makes little attempt to temper his passion with balance or perspective.

Rando employs images of light and dark to speak of sadness and loss and to contrast that sadness with the joy he dreams of possessing once again. The majority of the poems in the collection are love poems, written for a woman he compares to an angel, of whom he writes, “She is my heaven, my earth. She is everything to my heart." Some of these poems are written in the second person, speaking directly to her, and many are descriptions of this woman and the overwhelming feelings that the author has for her. Rando showers his beloved with praise and adoration throughout the book. A reader will no doubt long to find someone so worthy or perhaps dream that a poet will one day write such a poem for her.

Though most of Rando's poems are celebrations of the love he has found, and the woman with whom he has found it, the poems speak also of sadness. Rando hints at the loneliness he felt before finding this love, the emptiness he feels without her. “The Rose from Afar” is an example of this tension between joy and emptiness.

The Rose from Afar

The sweet smell of her skin
A warm wind embracing my heart
Like a blanket wrapped around my soul
The morning sunshine surrounds the mountains above
A beautiful rose appears from afar
Colors so vibrant they illuminate your darkest days
Tears fill my eyes as I watch the rose disappear into the
night sky
Missing my rose, like love missing from my empty heart.

Rando truly writes from the heart, expressing his joy and his pain with equal intensity. The title of this collection, The Inner Soul is fitting, as this book is Rando's deepest and most personal emotions set on paper.

Quill says: Passionate poems about love, loneliness, and loss.

For more information on A Book of Poems: The Inner Soul, please visit the author's website at: AnthonyFRando.com