Little Million Doors: An Elegy by Chad Sweeney / Nightboat Books / 2019 / 978-1643620008 / 80 pages Lines composed by a disjoint of conscious memory, shards of grief felt in the liminal spaces of … [Read more...]
The Meadow by Kristin Garth, reviewed by Tom Snarsky
The Meadow by Kristin Garth / APEP Publications / 2020 Towards the end of Shakespeare’s sequence of 154 sonnets, the reader is introduced to a character known as the Dark Lady who plays a … [Read more...]
Residual sonnets by Mark Young, reviewed by Clara B. Jones
Residual sonnets by Mark Young / ma press [Finland] / 2019 / 100 pages / $5.00 Residual [re-sid-ual] Adjective: remaining after the greater part has gone “'Bricolage,' more than anything else, … [Read more...]
Investigating Digital Zones: Reading Ed Steck’s An Interface for a Fractal Landscape
An Interface for a Fractal Landscape by Ed Steck / Ugly Duckling Presse / 2019 / 978-1-946433-01-5 / 192 pages The corporeal and the digital are not mutually exclusive zones. Often they overlap. … [Read more...]
Lucky by Amy Watkins, reviewed by Lorena Parker Matejowsky
Lucky by Amy Watkins / Bottlecap Press / 2019 In Lucky (Bottlecap Press, 2019), a new chapbook from poet Amy Watkins, a woman looks back with wonder at the little girl lucky enough to … [Read more...]
The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya, reviewed by Margaryta Golovchenko
The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya / Soft Skull Press / 224 pages / 978-1593766788 / 2018 “Life’s not worth living if you’re not tending to the whims and demands of a high-maintenance … [Read more...]
A Jewish Refugee in New York by Kadya Molodovsky, trans. Anita Norich, reviewed by Jessica Kirzane
A Jewish Refugee in New York by Kadya Molodovsky. Translated by Anita Norich / Indiana University Press / 978-0253040763 / 2019 / 172 pages. In some ways, the narrator of Kadya Molodovsky’s A … [Read more...]
Transmissions from the Abyss: Sublunary Editions’ Monthly Mailings
Sublunary Editions is a publisher focused on highlighting shorter texts. Each month, they mail out an envelope with a set of two written works to their subscribers. Being a relatively new press, they … [Read more...]
Giant Steps: Fifty poets reflect on the Apollo 11 moon landing and beyond, reviewed by Rochelle Jewel Shapiro
Giant Steps: Fifty poets reflect on the Apollo 11 moon landing and beyond, edited by Paul Munden and Shane Strange /Recent Works Press / Canberra, Australia / 2019 / 101 pages / … [Read more...]
Ill Angels by Dante Di Stefano, reviewed by Neil Leadbeater
Ill Angels by Dante Di Stefano / Etruscan Press / 2019 / ISBN 9780998750880 / 92 pages. We rarely think of angels as being ill. If we make the assumption that “ill” is being used here in … [Read more...]
Paper-Thin Skin by Aigerim Tazhi, translated by J. Kates, reviewed by Eric Nguyen
Paper-Thin Skin by Aigerim Tazhi, translated from Russian by J. Kates / Zephyr Press / 978-1-938890901 / 2019 Aigerim Tazhi is a difficult poet to pin down. For one, she writes in Russian in … [Read more...]
Penumbra by Kate Behrens, reviewed by Michael S. Begnal
Penumbra by Kate Behrens / Two Rivers Press / 978-1-909747-46-3 / 2019 “Penumbra” is one of those words that I always think I know the meaning of, but then I realize I need to look it up again to … [Read more...]
out of emptied cups by Anne Casey, reviewed by Rochelle Jewel Shapiro
out of emptied cups by Anne Casey / Salmon Poetry / 2019 / 978-1-912561-74 / 101 pages The title of Anne Casey’s second collection of poetry, out of emptied cups, is drawn from the … [Read more...]
boy/girl/ghost by torrin a. greathouse, reviewed by Danielle Rose
boy/girl/ghost by torrin a. greathouse / TAR Chapbook Series / 2nd edition reissue 2019 It may be impossible to track down an old quote I once read, somewhere, concerning The Matrix … [Read more...]
not written words by Xi Xi, translated from Chinese by Jennifer Feeley, reviewed by Sherrel McLafferty
not written words by Xi Xi, translated from Chinese by Jennifer Feeley / Zephyr Press / 978-1938890123 / 2016 Xi Xi’s not written words is a youthful collection of poems that remind readers that … [Read more...]
The Anna Karenina Fix by Viv Groskop, reviewed by Margaryta Golovchenko
The Anna Karenina Fix by Viv Groskop / Harry N. Abrams / 978-1419732720 / 2018 The Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons from Russian Literature is more than your average memoir, beginning with its … [Read more...]
Dots & Dashes by Jehanne Dubrow, reviewed by Maggie Warren
Dots & Dashes by Jehanne Dubrow / Southern Illinois University Press (The Crab Orchard Series in Poetry) / 978-0-8093-3609-8 / 2017 With chocolates shaped like fighter jets, margarita mix in … [Read more...]
Language Cells: Laura Hyunjhee Kim’s Entering the Blobosphere
Entering the Blobosphere: A Musing on Blobs by Laura Hyunjhee Kim / Civil Coping Mechanisms / Paperback / 100 pages / 978-1948700184 / June 17, 2019 Laura Hyunjhee Kim’s Entering the Blobosphere: A … [Read more...]
Decadent Wildfire: A Review of Flowers of the Flesh by Effy Winter
Flowers of the Flesh by Effy Winter / Rhythm & Bones Press / 2019 Effy Winter is a captivating writer based in Philadelphia, P.A. Winter’s work explores unfathomable heartache and unbridled … [Read more...]
Bully Love by Patricia Colleen Murphy, reviewed by Rochelle Jewel Shapiro
Bully Love by Patricia Colleen Murphy / Press 53 / 978-1-950413-03-4 / 2019 Patricia Colleen Murphy’s second poetry collection, Bully Love, has already won the Press 53 Award for Poetry, and I’m … [Read more...]
Dispatches from the Mushroom Kingdom by Noel Pabillo Mariano, reviewed by Margaryta Golovchenko
Dispatches from the Mushroom Kingdom by Noel Pabillo Mariano / Hyacinth Girl Press / 31 pages / $6.00 Questions of the spoken/external and unspoken/internal sort are at the heart of Dispatches from … [Read more...]
12 Points: Love Me, Anyway by Minadora Macheret
1. Love Me, Anyway was published by Porkbelly Press in 2018 in Cincinnati, Ohio. 2. This is Minadora Macheret’s first chapbook. 3. The speaker in these poems details three main subjects: the … [Read more...]
Earthly Whispers: On Ocean Vuong & Erick Sáenz
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong / Penguin Press / 978-0525562023 / June 4, 2019Susurros a mi Padre by Erick Sáenz / The Operating System / 978-1946031259 / July 15, 2018 Early in … [Read more...]
Shiny Dark Mind Candy: Mayhem & Death by Helen McClory, reviewed by Laura Morgan
Mayhem & Death by Helen McClory / 404 Ink / 978-1912489022 / 208 pages There are seas where the dead lie so thick they are pressed into a layer of silt the colour of yoghurt that sits at the … [Read more...]
The Experiment of the Tropics by Lawrence Lacambra Ypil, reviewed by Kendrick Loo
The Experiment of the Tropics by Lawrence Lacambra Ypil / Gaudy Boy Imprint / 2018 / 72 pages. It is difficult to unpack the impact of imperial power from culture. Some facts are historical: Asian … [Read more...]
The short story of you and I by Richard James Allen, reviewed by Rochelle Jewel Shapiro
The short story of you and I by Richard James Allen / UWA Publishing / 2019 / 112 pages / 9781760800215 “My poems are sleeping in these pages / waiting for you to rouse them,” Richard James Allen, … [Read more...]
Lizzie, Speak by Kailey Tedesco, reviewed by Catherine Garbinsky
Lizzie, Speak by Kailey Tedesco / White Stag Publishing / 2019 / 978-1732399235 Lizzie, Speak by Kailey Tedesco is a séance in the form of a book, a conjuring of the spirit of Lizzie Borden, … [Read more...]
POET by Clark Coolidge, reviewed by Steve Dalachinsky
POET by Clark Coolidge / Pressed Wafer Press / 2018 Last spring I had the privilege of hearing Clark Coolidge read from his manuscript POET in San Francisco at Bird and Beckett to a capacity … [Read more...]
Explorations in Form: New Small Press Releases
It’s the goal of small presses such as Inside the Castle, Dostoyevsky Wannabe, Schism, and others like them to publish unconventional forms of literature, those in the expanded field --- whatever that … [Read more...]
Please Find Us by Wendy Oleson, reviewed by Sarah Wiggers
Please Find Us by Wendy Oleson / Gertrude Press / 47 pages / 2017 Please Find Us contains thirteen stories of survival. In the fifty-page chapbook, Oleson’s carefully crafted characters struggle to … [Read more...]
Re- by Andrea Blancas Beltran, reviewed by Carolyn Ogburn
Re- by Andrea Blancas Beltran / Redbird Chapbooks / 2018 Andrea Blancas Beltran’s chapbook, Re-, is a beautiful, textured collection of poems centered around her grandmother’s memory loss, and … [Read more...]
Constant Stranger: After Frank Stanford, reviewed by Jared Benjamin
Constant Stranger: After Frank Stanford, edited by Max Crinnin & Aidan Ryan / Foundlings Press / 2018. In the early 1970s, a poet from the Mississippi heartland, expatriated to the Ozark scenery of … [Read more...]
The Wrench and Reach of Grace: Feet of the Messenger by H.C. Palmer, reviewed by Wm. Anthony Connolly
Feet of the Messenger by H.C. Palmer / BkMk Press / 9781943491100 / 2018 Everything is here and now --- childhood, beauty, war, peace --- all apiece of a tapestry woven by the expert hands of the … [Read more...]
A perimeter by rob mclennan, reviewed by Ali Znaidi
A perimeter by rob mclennan / New Star Books / 978-1-55420-128-0 / paperback / 80 pages / 2016 In A perimeter rob mclennan has ordered the poems which were written between 2010 and 2014 in a way … [Read more...]
Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer, reviewed by Beth Spencer
Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer / Random House / 320 pages / 9780812995701 / Jan 29, 2019 Stop the presses! Stop submitting to them, that is, … [Read more...]
The Exile Illuminated as the Native Returned: Steve Dalachinsky’s Where Night and Day Become One: The French Poems / A Selection 1983-2017
Where Night and Day Become One: The French Poems / A Selection 1983-2017 by Steve Dalachinsky / great weather for MEDIA / 978-0998144030 / 2018 The American artist's fascination with France has … [Read more...]
House of the Cardamom Seed by Penelope Scambly Schott, reviewed by John Yohe
House of the Cardamom Seed by Penelope Scambly Schott / Cherry Grove / 2018 / 978-1-62549-270-8 One of the pleasures of making a pilgrimage to Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon is sometimes … [Read more...]
Raena Shirali’s Gilt, reviewed by Daschielle Louis
Gilt by Raena Shirali / YesYes Books / 978-1-936919-41-3 / 2017 I remember the conditioning well. Women teaching me the ways of being woman. Being clean. Most importantly, unseen. Gilt opens a … [Read more...]
The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way: On Writers and Writing by Charles Bukowski
The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way: On Writers and Writing by Charles Bukowski. Edited by David Stephen Calonne / City Lights Books / 978-0-87286-759-8 / 2018 I kind of don't know how they … [Read more...]
Apocalyptic Language: Reading Brooks Rexroat’s Thrift Store Coats
Thrift Store Coats by Brooks Rexroat / Orson's Publishing / 978-0991446391 Brooks Rexroat’s debut short story collection, Thrift Store Coats explores the harsh and often unforgiving landscape of … [Read more...]
