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...]
Katy Wareham Morris’ Cutting the Green Ribbon: a review by Antony Owen
Cutting the Green Ribbon by Katy Wareham Morris / Hesterglock Press / 9781999915346 / 45 pages / 2018 Cutting the Green Ribbon arrives at a turning point in 21st-century arts, with women emerging … [Read more...]
Each Wild Thing’s Consent by Lauren Davis, reviewed by Sarah Stockton
Each Wild Thing’s Consent by Lauren Davis / Poetry Wolf Press / 30 pages / 2018 / digital ($8) and soft bound ($10). All proceeds benefit Dove House Advocacy Services, which provides crisis … [Read more...]
Scorpio by Katy Bohinc, reviewed by Tom Snarsky
Scorpio by Katy Bohinc / Miami University Press / 978-1881163633 / paperback / 71 pages / 2018 ...I still believe it starts with you and me (from “Hung Out”) I remember when I was young, … [Read more...]
A kind of jazz sensibility: on Gary Lundy’s poetry
each room echoes absence by Gary Lundy / FootHills Publishing / 80 pages / 2018 It’s possible to visit Butterfly Herbs in downtown Missoula for years without realizing there is a coffee shop tucked … [Read more...]
The Task of Translation in tasks by Víctor Rodríguez Núñez and Katherine M. Hedeen: A review essay by Olivia Lott
tasks by Víctor Rodríguez Núñez. Translated by Katherine M. Hedeen / co•im•press / 978-0988819962 / paperback / 131 pages / 2016 Reading tasks begins at its edges: a seven-part … [Read more...]
Brittany Helmick reviews Vievee Francis’ Forest Primeval
Forest Primeval by Vievee Francis / Northwestern University Press / 2016 / 978-0-8101-3243-6 Every so often I take a trip to the woods, and every time I come out having had a different … [Read more...]
Tasha Coryell’s Hungry People reviewed by Kelly Flynn
Hungry People by Tasha Coryell / Split Lip Press / 978-1721553457 / 212 pages / August 3, 2018 On the cover of Tasha Coryell’s debut short story collection, Hungry People, a … [Read more...]
Florilegium: Palestinian Walks
Palestinian Walks by Raja Shehadeh / Scribner (Simon and Schuster) / 2007 / 978-1416569664 Imagine the home you love despoiled by conquerors, who insist they are claiming only what is owed … [Read more...]
Ceremonial by Carly Joy Miller, reviewed by Valorie K. Ruiz
Ceremonial by Carly Joy Miller / Orison Books / 978-0-9964397-7-0 / 2018 Ceremonial, a debut full-length release from Carly Joy Miller, is praise and rage blended into one. It’s a delicate … [Read more...]
Frivolity and Elegy: On Dennis Lee’s Heart Residence: Collected Poems 1967-2017
Heart Residence: Collected Poems 1967-2017 by Dennis Lee. Edited by Robert Bringhurst. / House of Anansi / 978-1487001490 /2017 Like many readers, I encountered the writing of Dennis Lee at least … [Read more...]
Luxury and Modernism: Architecture and the Object in Germany 1900-1933
Luxury and Modernism: Architecture and the Object in Germany 1900-1933 by Robin Schuldenfrei / Princeton University Press / 2018 / 978-0691175126 / 338 pages with 74 color and 126 black and white … [Read more...]
Experiments in the Function of Language: Reading Laura Riding’s Experts Are Puzzled
Experts Are Puzzled by Laura Riding / Ugly Duckling Presse / 978-1937027865 / May 1, 2018 / 144 pages Laura Riding’s Experts Are Puzzled is a difficult book to classify. At times it looks like a … [Read more...]
To The Many: Collected Early Works by Lola Ridge, reviewed by Billy Mills
To the Many: Collected Early Works by Lola Ridge. Daniel Tobin, ed. / Little Island Press / August 2018 Lola Ridge’s life was, in many ways, a tale of her times. Born Rose Emily Ridge in … [Read more...]
