She would leave herself if she could: Halsey’s collection of poems

Time+to+wind+down+with+a+good+book+of+poems%2C+playing+calming+music+through+both+headphones%2C+shutting+out+reality+and+escaping+into+another+one.+

Marisa Garcia

Time to wind down with a good book of poems, playing calming music through both headphones, shutting out reality and escaping into another one.

Marisa Garcia, Photo Coordinator

Warning, “I Would Leave Me If I Could” contains mature content.

Here are Halsey’s insides, handle them with care. Halsey, born Ashley Nicolette Frangipane, is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter. Her songs are her poems, now one can obtain some of those raw, passionate and well spoken poems to get even deeper into the mind of Halsey and Ashley. 

“I Would Leave Me If I Could” is a collection of poetry written by Halsey. Halsey writes passionately about love, longing, heartbreak, anger and her bipolar disorder. Some poems are familiar to fans such as, “A Story Like Mine,” a poem that Halsey read at the Women’s March in 2018 sharing assault stories of what she has been through and how they are similar to other stories she has heard from her friends and it’s a war for women meaning to be won. 

Other poems show a completely vulnerable side to Halsey with poems talking about her bipolar disorder, such as her first poem, “Introduction,” where she talks about how messy her mind is, how she has “flipped spastically from FM to AM” and that she has “found a home amongst the chaos.” In her last poem “I Wish That I Were Manic All The Time,” she mentions again how her disorder made her mind messy but beautiful, how she prefers the mania bipolar disorder has to offer rather than the depression. 

Halsey’s poems are her songs, and she puts them in the collection to show how poems are just songs with no melody. “Devil In Me,” is a poem that speaks about Halsey finally being able to show who she is after a toxic relationship that made her believe the real person inside her is a bad one; it can be heard on her album “Hopeless Fountain Kingdom.” “Forever… Is A Long Time,” is a poem where she talks about her love for her partner that is patient, understanding and loving to a mentally wounded Halsey; it was first heard as a song off her latest album “Manic.” 

From chart hitting music to a collection of poems, just by writing a few thousand sentences Halsey never fails to be a compelling voice of her generation. In this book, you can hear of her two voices, Halsey and Ashley. Halsey is the public figure, the one who is a performer, passionate, reckless and bold. Ashley is an artist, who writes her heart out and prefers to let her art speak for itself. The two are one in the same, and over the years she has been in the public eye, “I Would Leave Me If I Could” along with her recent album “Manic” is the first time the public hears more from Ashley rather than Halsey.