Book Review

Fortunate: Tarot Poetry

by Kim Rashidi

Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing

168 Pages

Release Date: May 3, 2022

 

 

 

 

Fortunate: Tarot Poetry is a sweet book containing 78 short poems inspired by the 78 cards of the Tarot. The poems are presented in a randomized order in the book, and it is suggested in the short introduction that the reader may wish to use the book as a form of Tarot-inspired bibliomancy. Each poem also comes with a few blank pages, so that the book can be used as a Tarot journal, or as a place where someone may collect notes and reflections on the poems and cards.

The poems contain advice and reflection inspired by each card. The whole book can be seen as a sort of Tarot deck itself, just one made of poetry instead of art. The poems reflect the author’s distilled view of each Tarot card, and this is both the book’s strength and its weakness. Some Tarot decks are abstract, allowing for plenty of personal projection from the querent and the reader; others may be illustrated in detail, with plenty of specifics to pull from each card. Different deck styles allow for different reading styles; some may find the abstract cards easier to project an intuitive reading onto, while others may like to read with a more educated and traditionalist eye, drawing meaning only from the cards themselves.

This Tarot deck of words falls somewhere between these two reading styles. The language of the poems has a certain vagueness allowing for open interpretation, while the specific aspects of each poem pin down the aspects of the card that the author has decided to highlight. As poetry, it’s light and lyrical but not overly complicated, which is absolutely a good thing in this context ? lengthy metaphors, riddles, or imagery aren’t necessary here, and would only obscure the meaning of each poem. There are occasional rhymes and visual arrangements meant to highlight the content of the poems. Thematically, the elements and the suits are the most pervasive forces, running through every poem to weave them together.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. The poems are short (some more than others), but offer plenty of material for personal reflection. I suspect that this is a book that would be enjoyable for beginning readers as much as experienced ones, but there is probably a bare minimum of Tarot understanding and knowledge that will aid the reader in understanding the poems. While I read the book straight through cover to cover in order to review it, I can see that it would be a fun dimension of bibliomancy to add to a regular Tarot practice, or to shared rituals.

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About the Author

kim rashidi is a 24-year-old poet based in toronto. she explores the cosmos through her words and has a soft spot for capturing love and life in the mundane. writing about the lives, cities, and timelines that mirror back the romantic, she weaves reality with imagined possibilities. she holds an MA in English literature and has taken to poetry since she was 16.

 

Fortunate: Tarot Poetry on Amazon

 

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About the Author:

Sarah McMenomy is a visionary artist, author, and witch. Pulling inspiration from trance states, dreams, auras, psychedelia, and the natural world, she weaves together themes of nature and the occult in her artwork and writing. She has created art and written for books, magazines, games, and more, as well as producing digital fine art prints and acrylic paintings. 
She is the creator of The Entanglement Tarot, a hex-shaped occult Tarot deck designed for spell-craft. 
She is co-runner of Pagan Pages, for which she also writes articles and book reviews, and she also publishes art on her Portfolio site and other work on her Tumblr.