You Only Love Me When I’m Suffering by Jon Lupin - Book Review

Jon combines raw emotion with relatable imagery while adding a dash of fiction representation in his poems. Inspired by his personal struggles with heartbreak, the love before it, and how he was able to overcome the pain of losing that love, Jon does an excellent job in encapsulating the emotions he remembers feeling.

By using a first-person perspective, Jon directs these poems toward the one who broke his heart. However, it gives a relatability for people who are feeling the way he has. The topic of love and/or heartbreak is perhaps one of the most popular subjects in poetry, as well as in writing as a whole.

The title itself—You Only Love Me When I’m Suffering—is striking and instantly gives potential readers an idea of what the poems inside are about. In terms of the cover and formatting inside the book, it’s significant of Jon’s style from his previous books, as well as the poems he posts on his Instagram account.

The emotions in Jon’s poems come across exceptionally well throughout the book. The poems that focus on love relay those emotions while the ones expressing heartbreak or strength express those emotions also.

Each poem focuses one of these three emotions as the book progresses, and it’s done well. Jon’s style utilizes each line of his poems to tell mini stories and reveal easily-identifiable themes.

Even if you aren’t in the love, heartbreak, or rebuilding stage because, for example, you aren’t in a relationship, there are pieces of each poem that make them all enjoyable at the very least.

The poem, “You Only Love Me When I’m Suffering”, is one of the most powerful from the book due to its message of conflicted feelings (love and fear), which often collide in most relationships and further add to Jon’s central themes of this poetry collection.