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...]
