Book Review: Pleasure, Plague & Pain

Last semester, I got the opportunity to purchase a book I had been expecting for quite some time. Those who know Kelsins Santos, know he has always had the desire to write. He’s read his poems at open mics and has always supported other local writers and poets. In this tight-knit community of writers, he learned how to fine-tune his verses, and after almost two years, he finally published his first book, titled Pleasure, Plague & Pain. However, this creation transformed many times and underwent several title changes before settling into its final form.

Kelsins “Kels” involved other fellow writers by  including an introduction by Fernando “Fen” Correa, a poem by Anthony Acevedo, and an afterword by Patrick O’Neill. In Fen’s words, this book wants its readers to ask themselves, “If life experiences create who we are, then who are we without them?” Thanks to his perfectionist and detail-oriented nature, Kelsins created a carefully and intricately written  set of poems where new hidden meanings come to light with each extra read. The book is divided into three parts which correspond to the title of the book. he tackles the meaning of love, family, perception, the journey of life, and injustices one commits or endures .

A great aspect of the entire book is that in each of its three parts, Kels includes a long poem divided in three intermissions. These are “Thank you I: Recall,” “Thank You II: Tree” and “Thank You III: Price,” as well as “Fall Forward,” parts I, II and III. These unify the entire text and change the meaning when read back-to-back as well.

Faithful to its name, the first part of the book is all about pleasure, starting with the very sensual poem “Mango.” It compares the act of eating a juicy mango to the sensuality of a woman’s body. The other two poems that stood out to me were “Drawings,” with its allegory of dreams and life’s purpose, and “Aphrodisiac,” with its four pages of heart-racing rhyme and amazingly sexy verses. One of these is: “Wake you up, breakfast for one . . . as long as I have you around.”

The second part of Pleasure, Plague & Pain features a picture of a car crash, symbolizing all human-authored plague we hold within and what we inflict elsewhere. Poems like “Devil” and “She tells you” are about past loves that crashed and burned, while “Admiration” speaks about lost love. There are others like “Windowsill dreams,” which make you think about passions you kill because others tell you they are worthless. A beautiful and captivating image of “The City” follows “Poem #1,” which captures a feeling of seemingly unavoidable enslavement of those who forget to use their voice.  The cherry on top of the third part of the book is “Fall Forward,” with three pages of verse going through the entire alphabet.

Lastly, the third part talks about pain. For example, the pain of “unresolved lust” in “Fragility” and of losing oneself in “How I look.” Another poem talks about the pain of being “human, all too human,” and another one talks about the pain that comes after losing faith in love. Yet, “When she Speaks” is about how love cannot be love without pain. Further on, in “M.I.A.” he talks about the racial and social marginalization he has experienced in his life. Finally, “Pain” is the acceptance of suffering as part of life  and how it makes us grow as human beings.

Pleasure, Plague & Pain truly is an unique book and it can be seen how arduously Kels worked on it. It is riddled with hidden meanings, creative poetic structures, amazing rhymes, and imaginative verses. My favorite part of the book is the poem titled “Luv,” where Kels reinvents the concept of love as he sees it:

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