In brief, sincerely, is a collection of love poems that were written as a gift that culminates with a marriage proposal to Yousaf’s partner. I have to say, this collection seems more outward-focused and less solipsistic than many of the other Instagram poets. That is not to say that Yousaf’s speaker is not often praising the beloved for her effect on him, but I do want to give credit to Yousaf because this seems less a vanity project than a true gift for someone else (which Anne Lamott fruitfully suggests as an impetus for writing in Bird by Bird).
The poems are what I’d describe as ‘whatever’. They are not particularly compelling except that once in a while they touch a nerve due to their relatability—not really in the quality of their imagery or metaphor, but just in the general applicability of their content. Sometimes, the poems are cringy in their generalities: “You enlightened my mind and softened my heart. Your laugh was the kind that brightened up a gloomy day. You were caring, and I envied that you beat my love for you tenfold. You were exactly what people looked for, and just what I needed” (“Journal Entry: One Year Later” 52). Overall, the tone of the book is one that is uplifting and encouraging. They inspire the feel-good vibes of young romance and, previous example notwithstanding, it actually feels sincere. In “Former Stories / Better Conclusions”, Yousaf writes, “You were the girl / I wanted to charm with my writing. / For I knew that average words would not work / With you, / You were remarkable, / And craved the spontaneous kind of love / That ill-fated writers had, / The ones that only reside / In history books and novels. // I pray our story does not end like theirs. / I only desire a tale of stability and peaceful mornings” (12). Setting out with a central premise of wooing someone with words is a great starting place for the book and in a few lines this poem establishes the central characters effectively. The characters have flashes of personality and character development, particularly in some of the page-length poems: “You pick your flowers in handfuls, / Without giving a thought / To the stems that land / Between the creases of your palms. / You make sure of their crisp petals, / And stern stem, / Hoping they will last you a lifetime” (“Affable” 31). There’s not a ton of depth to the characters, but there’s a little more than just the tracings to be filled that other Instapoets cynically offer for you to colour in with your own experiences.
The poems have that saccharine sentimentality common to Instapoetry, which emerges in poems like “Present”. Yousaf writes, “I ended up loving the moment / More than the memories. / I would rather be with you, / And see you blossom day by day, / Than remember how we used to be” (26). The poem itself, as I said, is ‘whatever’ but what gives this a little bit of an edge over its multitude of competitors is that it is not an entirely untroubled kind of love story. The idea that emerges here of getting bound up in the past rather than continuing to grow, the kind of stagnation that occurs when idealizing a relationship gets a subtle nod that, in my view, adds somewhat to the sincerity of sincerely,.
There’s actually a somewhat refreshing trajectory of the book. It goes from love poems into some darkness poems and then towards a not untroubled future and culminating in the ultimate marriage of the central characters. What I like about the middle is similar to the above: the character experiences darkness but does not make their partner the sole solution to all of their problems. Consider the poem “Buoyant” which frames the beloved as a help, but not a complete solution to pain:
It seems pretty clear that the fog is or is something similar to depression. It would be easy to say that love cures all, but Yousaf smartly does not take that direction: “Even when I think of you / The fog does not dissipate” — and we even get the nice image of a “boundless cloud.” The rest of the poem succumbs to the lack of imagery and metaphor endemic to the genre, but at least the ethical-relational impulses are there.
A few pages later, “Caretaker” reiterates the same ideas. Yousaf writes, “I asked if the ill feelings / That lodged themselves between / The slim openings of my ribs were / Normal to feel, / And you disagreed with me / With every ounce of air / That could fill your lungs” (73). He continues, “You helped in unleashing / The best parts of me / And aided in combatting my faults / Instead of discarding them” (73). It’s not that the beloved cures the illness creeping in, but it does “aid.”
I’m sure that there will be an audience for this book who will, in turn, find themselves aided by the uplifting energy of the text. I’d like to imagine these poems will bring people together and that loved ones will share words with one another to find themselves closer together, even in hard times.
As an esthete, I’m going to have to class this book as of minimal interest. As a human, I’ll class it as cute. As someone who has read far more Instagram poetry than he ever thought he would, I’d probably put sincerely, as one of the better entries into the genre. It’s still doesn’t enrich me nearly as much as a single more dense or challenging poem from a better collection might. It was an okay way to spend an hour and a half or so.
Anyway…whatever!
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