Chet’la Sebree, in her premier collection, Mistress, offers an astonishing parallel between the 19th and 21st-century woman and the challenges of navigating Black womanhood at the intersection of men, sexuality, and self-actualization. She creates a speaker born of the innermost thoughts of both Sally Hemings, the slave and alleged mistress of Thomas Jefferson, and herself …
Summer Snow is a rich and substantial new collection from the acclaimed poet Robert Hass. As the former Poet Laureate’s first new collection in ten years, and the length and breadth of the book suggest careful, years-long work. At age 79, Hass’s latest work is often elegiac in some form or another, for people or …
One should never judge a book by its cover, they say, but one look at the sumptuous cover and lovely Urdu title of Adeeba Shahid Talukder’s Kundiman Prize-winning poetry collection and you feel something extraordinary is contained therein. The cover picture is a lavishly detailed historical painting of a wedding, full of people in attendance, …
Review of Shahr-e-Jaannaan: The City of the Beloved by Adeeba Shahid Talukder Read More »
“Love Calls Us to the Things of This World,” wrote the poet Richard Wilbur, paraphrasing St. Augustine’s Confessions, Book X. In a revision of Wilbur and Augustine, the speaker in Dana Roeser’s fourth poetry collection confesses: “Clutter keeps / me bound to this / earth.” The things of this world—the clutter of our living—is an …
The literary canon hasn’t changed all that much, is what I hear from several teachers. They say it with a dismissive tone and an impatience for contemporary work. The fact that there are instructors and professors who teach with this mindset is a sad reality, especially when their occupation bears the responsibility of introducing literary …
Primal Civilisation– On Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné’s Doe Songs by Vladimir Lucien I first came across Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné’s work during undergrad in a slim volume published by University of the West Indies (St. Augustine). The work gathered there had been some of the best work coming out of a creative writing course that the Department of Literatures …
Primal Civilisation- On Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné’s Doe Songs: Vladimir Lucien Read More »
A review of Rachel Galvin’s Elevated Threat Level. Green Lantern Press, 2018. In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Review of Books, Rachel Galvin argues, “Poetry, like journalism, is a first draft of history.” In her second book of poems, Elevated Threat Level, published in a slim, elegant edition by Green Lantern Press in …
What kind of music / can you put a hole through’: Rachel Galvin’s Civilian Poetic Read More »
Beyond Time and Place: A Review of Where the Light is Violet by Xánath Caraza reviewed by Arthur Kayazakian I was supposed to write this book review a year and a half ago. The reminder sat in the back of my head, haunting me the whole year. Something inside me stirred violently; I was worried …
Beyond Time and Place: A Review of Where the Light is Violet by Xánath Caraza Read More »
My Stunt Double, by Travis Denton reviewed by J.G. McClure Travis Denton’s latest poetry collection, My Stunt Double (C&R Press 2018) shows a poet grappling with what beauty might mean in our science fictional age. The collection’s opening poem, “What Beauty Gives Us,” begins: When I look up at the red dot in the sky Grazing …
Travis Denton’s My Stunt Double: Review by J.G. McClure Read More »
The Fire Lit & Nearing by J.G. McClure. Brooklyn, New York: Indolent Books May 2018. 78 pages. $14.99, paper. Whenever I encounter a new volume of poetry, I open the book and read the first randomly chosen line my finger falls upon. I do this as an act of divination, though I’m not concerned …
Book Review of The Fire Lit & Nearing by Leonard Kress Read More »
The Art of Disorder in Heidi Seaborn’s Give a Girl Chaos (see what she can do) by Michelle Bitting January 28, 2019 One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star… For someone who holds near and dear Nietzsche’s famous adage on chaos and its role as an integral force …
“Between Risk and Refuge”: a review of A Cry in the Snow and other poemsby Stella Vinitchi Radulescu, translated by Luke Hankins by José Angel Araguz Reading Stella Vinitchi Radulescu’s poems originally written in French translated into English drives home the dual privilege and responsibility that comes with the work of translation. In …
“Between Risk and Refuge”: on Stella Vinitchi Radulescu, translated by Luke Hankins Read More »
Life in Suspension / La Vie Suspendue by Hélène Cardona Salmon Press, 2016 Reviewed by Alison Williams If a purpose of poetry is to transcend, then Hélène Cardona’s poems in her new book Life in Suspension / La Vie Suspendue reflect a linguistic spiritual transcendence that is illuminated on every page. It is a transcendence, …
Book Review: Life in Suspension / La Vie Suspendue by Hélène Cardona Read More »
FORGIVE THE BODY THIS FAILURE Blas Falconer (Four Way Books, 2018) Much has been written about the necessity and even the benefits of learning how to fail. Tragedy in the classic sense is a master class on failure, the failure of the mind to overcome what has been ordained either by God or the State …
Forgive the Body This Failure: David Keplinger on Blas Falconer Read More »
BIRNAM WOOD El Bosque de Birnam by José Manuel Cardona Tr. by Hélène Cardona Salmon Press, 2018 ISBN: 978-1-912561-18-6 The late José Manuel Cardona, star poet of Ibiza, scholar, translator and literary victim of Franco, has died only very recently and his death has robbed Europe of one of its last links with a …
Poetry of Exile: Thomas McCarthy on José Manuel Cardona Read More »
xamissa by Henk Rossouw Fordham University Press Reviewed by Keenan Colditz “In the city begin and begin again sleep’s graffiti” —Henk Rossouw xamissa, by Henk Rossouw, is a book length poem and the winner of the 2017 Poets Out Loud Editor’s prize. In this historically rich text, Rossouw de-centers the reader by placing them in …
Fish Boy by John Gosslee Nomadic Press, 2018 Reviewed by Sam Leon In Fish Boy, John Gosslee has created a tiny contemporary art museum for exploring the relationship between him and his father, and the relationship he has with his own identity. Gosslee has preserved memories of significant moments and feelings and curated them based …
Lessons in Camouflage by Martin Ott C&R Press, 2018 Reviewed by Adam Crittenden When I received my copy of Martin Ott’s Lessons in Camouflage, I was first intrigued by Ott’s background as a U.S. Army interrogator because I don’t often think of poets in the context of their “other” lives. And, Ott does not …
Book Review: Lessons In Camouflage by Martin Ott Read More »
