Film for Her by Orion Carloto
A Review of Orion Carloto’s
Film for Her
Film for Her by Orion Carloto (2020). Published by Andrew McMeel Publishing.
I’m going to be frank here; I am lowkey a part of that elitist institution that thinks social media stars should stay far, far away from poetry. I think this is because after spending a lot of time in the literary world, it’s all about craft at the end of the day. If you’re someone who just casually writes a poem every so often and you don’t go back to edit it, workshop it, etc., then, perhaps, I don’t think you’re very qualified to write a poetry collection. You’re just cashing in on your fame for money, which sucks for the rest of because anyone who is a poet knows that if you’re in poetry, you’re going to be broke forever.
I follow Orion Carloto on Instagram. I don’t consider myself a fan, I just like following people who post aesthetic pictures. All in all, she reminds me of Tumblr girls, which isn’t necessarily bad, but I’m coming into this book with prejudice. And I want to acknowledge that before I start this review, because I come in with a more critical eye to begin with, which is what can make this rating either really good, above the YouTube stars or really bad among the YouTube stars.
Now that I’m done this pseudo disclaimer of sorts, let’s dive straight into this.
Book Blurb
Film for Her is a story book of people, places, and memories captured on film. Through photographs, poetry, prose, and a short story, Orion Carloto invites readers to remember the forgotten and reach into the past, find comfort in the present, and make sense of the intangible future. Film photography isn’t just eye candy; it’s timeless and romantic—the ideal complement to Carloto’s writing. In Film for Her, much like a visual diary, word and image are intertwined in a book perfect for both gift and self-purchase.
Content (Poetry + Prose + Art) / Writing
Including the art was a cute little touch, but as a writer, it adds more intricacy of how this is like a pseudo-memoir. I liked that, but I wanted to see it more tell that story of the poems even more; at times, it just seemed to be there as aesthetic decor and didn’t connect to the poems as well as I would’ve liked them to.
The prose stories are merely okay. I’m not much of a prose writer, but I know what I like, and this wasn’t it. I’m a picky person when it comes to prose, and so these just didn’t hit the right buttons for me.
The very first poem I read on the page was “magnitude of torture,” and I did not think it was a good poem. It was too abstract, it’s just one long sentence broken up, and there honestly didn’t seem a lot of thought put into it. I thought that this was a bad start, and I was right about that. I didn’t like the poems in this collection much at all, because they seem like diary entries just broken up into lines. I wanted to see more poetic language, innovation, something that made me want to keep reading, and this text didn’t have that.
Conceptually, I find the mix of art, prose, and poetry to be interesting. It works, like a hybrid text, I just wouldn’t consider this a poetry collection anymore if you mix in prose. It’s inter-genre and hybrid. I think there needs to be more a balance perhaps because of this, since it seems a bit odd to throw in a random short story into something you’re calling a poetry collection. It screams kind of like a try hard, like look I do more than this. Not into that feeling at all.
There were way too many pictures. As something marketed as a writing collection, too many pictures makes it more of an art book. I like the concept of film photography and “film for her,” but it misses the mark. I could’ve seen a lot of pictures on Instagram instead.
I do want to applaud Carloto for how personal she went in this collection. She went deep into her own personal life, which is scary for someone who is also a social media star. People really dig deep into your psyche and personal life, and I was surprised she did so in this collection. Kudos to her for doing that, that’s really brave. I don’t want to shit on her and her words completely, because I know this is time and devotion. It’s tough love—I want to see her tap into her potential.
Overall Thoughts
I really wanted to like this, especially with the personal touch that Carloto includes into her tales, along with her own photographs from her life. But in the end, this came across as super washed out versions of what potential it had. From the get-go, from that first poem, I get this sense of incompleteness from the text itself. She could’ve dug much deeper than that, rather than have this very simpleton abstract concept broken up into lines.
I come from a traditional literary background, although I highly lean towards breaking the norm with hybrid works. Perhaps if she made this more like Diana Khoi Nguyen’s multimedia poetry collection, I would’ve leaned towards liking this more. Unfortunately, I didn’t like it in its current form.
This book has a lot of potential, but it’s extremely superficial and I honestly would’ve thought that it was a first draft. At times, it reads like a diary, and I don’t know how I like that.
All in all, this collection is not my cup of tea, but I’m sure it’s someone else’s.
