Review
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Title: Come, Sweet Day: Holding on To Hope In Dark Times: A Writer’s Journey
Author: Julianne Donaldson
Publisher: Ensign Peak
Genre: Poetry
Year Published: 2021
Number of Pages: 89
Binding: Hardback
ISBN10: 1629728446
ISBN13: 978-1629728445
Price: $14.99
Reviewed by Christine Tensmeyer for the Association for Mormon Letters
Come, Sweet Day is a small book in every way except for the content on the pages. Author Julianne Donaldson has written some thought-provoking poems and prose with the intent to help “every single person out there (who) is dealing with a lot of hard things” (p. 1). In these writings Donaldson speaks of loss, of hope, and of faith. Come, Sweet Day is divided into sections that describe a difficult journey: “My Wilderness,” “Grace,” “light,” “Home,” and “Mercy.” I really appreciated how in each of these sections the poems have a personal story from Donaldson. In these stories she talks about her dark times that broke with a ray of hope or a realization that God was with her along.
I enjoyed reading Donaldson’s personal experience about light where she talks about her garage and how all the light bulbs burnt out one by one and she never replaced the bulbs. While she was fumbling around in the dark garage, she didn’t realize for months that there was a perfectly good window there. She had been so focused on what she didn’t have that she missed what she already had and concluded that it’s not difficult to let the light in.
While I liked all the poems in the book, I particularly loved “Stand Up O, Daughter.” The words in “Stand Up O, Daughter” are strong and full of action and hope. The stanza that most powerful to me was:
Throw off the chains
By which you are bound
Brush off the dust
That place on the ground
Was never meant for you
Come, Sweet Day is beautifully formatted inside, with illustrations and backgrounds that reflect the individual poems and uses different fonts in poems for inflection. It’s a pleasure to flip through the pages and read the words on them.