Feathered Quill Book Reviews

 #Bookreview of Essentia: The Winding Path of the Soul, Selected Poems

By: Joe Giampaolo

Publication Date: December 1, 2025

ISBN: 979-8262305803

Reviewed by: Rebecca Jane Johnson

Review Date: October 2, 2025

When life delivers challenges, as we seek inspiration and enigma, the poems in this collection, Essentia: The Winding Path of the Soul, Selected Poems bring companionship, wisdom, and inspiration. This mix of haiku, tanka, and chöka display wit, brevity, and insight. Bestselling author Joe Giampaolo, who was born in Rome and emigrated to Canada, has written on philosophy, spirituality, poetry, and more and has published fifteen books and numerous magazine articles.

Delivering Giampaolo’s familiar introspective flair, these poems inspire reflection and resonate deep within. Tender phrases encourage the reader to “delve inward and uncover the nucleus of your being” (31). Open up perception to evoke “the non-duality between all of us…and our relation with the One” (39). These poems weave together emotion and existential inquiry. Here we find simple truth, easy joy, and necessary sorrow. When faced with challenges, these poems reveal how we triumph. Continue to crave, but also abandon cravings. Embrace beauty, but also be mesmerized by care for the meek and hidden lyricism.

With the variety of forms and memorable imagery, these poems can help readers to cultivate the kind of patience needed to bring wisdom. Under a tree “wait for the longing/and the fear to vanish” (13). Poems teach us. Poems ask these vital questions: what is the greatest good that we can do? Where does our true essence reside? What must we do to decode the messages that we are given along the way? The following stanza offers a glimpse into the nature of Time:

Galaxies are born

and die in the span of time

that on Earth it takes

for a petal of a rose

to float gently to the ground. (38)

This poem transports the mind to a cosmic realm. Similar to bending our minds with Time, these poems provide ways to contemplate pain. Pain accompanies living in a chaotic world with an awakened consciousness, and pain takes on a purpose. How do we find truth through parable, through thought? “Dream as a poet, explore as an adventurer, / test as a scientist” (56). Maybe we can return to that time when we could hear the sounds of the stars, talk to the wolves, and feel the heartbeat of the flowers. Travelers visit the poet from far away; they and we are those with whom he shares bread. At one turn, these poems help a reader explore the core of being and at the next turn, a reader finds a place “where the living and the dead inhabit the same space, / and communicate freely with one another” (108). These poems invite conscious engagement with the soul, inquiry, nature, Time, pain, and joy.

Quill says: Those who read and reflect on Essentia: The Winding Path of the Soul, Selected Poems will realize the ways inner turmoil leads to awakening. This is a precious collection that gives a precious gift.

For more information about Essentia: The Winding Path of the Soul, Selected Poems, please visit the author's Amazon page at: amazon.com/stores/Joe-Giampaolo/author/B08FXWZTLD.