Soulmate As a Verb by Kelsey L. Smoot
Reviewed by Bess Cooley | Mar 28, 2026 Dopamine Books, February 2026 Paperback, 120 pages, $16.95 I had the pleasure of hearing Kelsey L. Smoot read his work in a bookstore in the Atlanta area last spring. The room was small, quiet but crowded—in that way poetry readings are meant to be. Smoot had his audience, and […]
Florence by Bess Cooley
What Remains: Memory and Erasure in Bess Cooley’s Florence Reviewed by Dr. Kelsey L. SmootSundress Publications, October 15th, 2024Paperback, 78 pages, $16 Everything in Bess Cooley’s Florence is borrowed: the narrator’s pulse, thumping reliably thanks to blood donated by strangers; the love for a wife now gone, rejiggered and gifted to Florence (an inanimate gathering […]
god mornings, tiger nights by Nuha Fariha
Reviewed by Shlagha Borah | December 7, 2023Game Over Books, 2023Paperback, $18 “I traveled light like all daughters, carrying only my weight out of the world.” from “A Brief Travel Advisory” by Nuha Fariha Girlhood, nationhood, and an identity smeared across borders – Nuha Fariha’s collection of poems, god mornings, tiger nights, asks us to […]
of being neighbors by Daniel Biegelson
Reviewed by Alison Hramiak | September 16, 2022Ricochet Editions, 2021Small Press Distribution, $15 At first glance of being neighbors looks like a book that concentrates on what its title suggests –neighborliness. A fleeting glimpse at the contents might have you thinking that it is structured almost like a report with subheadings. Do not be fooled […]
Scale Model of a Country at Dawn by John Sibley Williams
Reviewed by Alison Hramiak | September 2, 2022Cider Press Review, 2022Paperback, 85 pp. $18.95 A Scale Model of a Country at Dawn by John Sibley Williams looks at the world through a different lens – a lens that feels like it came from another world. It comprises a grounded series of poems reflecting on love […]
The Tillable Land by Melva Sue Priddy
Reviewed by Andrew Lee Butler | July 16, 2022Shadelandhouse Modern Press, 2022Paperback, 91 pp. $17.00 There is a line in The Tillable Land—a simple, straightforward line—that resonates to me as a working thesis for Melva Sue Priddy’s fine collection of poetry. In “Ode to the Dish Sink,” the speaker recalls how the thankless task of […]
One Person Holds So Much Silence by David Greenspan
Reviewed by María Castro Dominguez | April 19, 2022Driftwood Press, 2022Paperback, 80 pages, $14.99 One Person Holds So Much Silence is an eye-ear-mind-kicking collection of nineteen poems divided into three sections: a body of poems that become disembodied and subsequently embodied by the reader who succumbs into its magnetic enchantment. As if following Roland Barthes’s […]
What Pecan Light by Hannah VanderHart
Reviewed by Christian J. Collier and Kasey Jueds | April 14, 2022Bull City Press, 2021Paperback, 68 pages, $18.95 KJ: Christian, I’m so happy to be talking about this beloved book with you. I’m struggling with the question of where to begin! It’s a question that often comes up when I’m beginning a review of a […]
An Interview with Leah Silvieus | by Hope Fischbach
Leah Silvieus is the author of three poetry collections, most recently, Arabilis (Sundress Publications 2019), and is the co-editor with Lee Herrick of The World I Leave You: An Anthology of Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit (Orison Books 2020). She is a Kundiman fellow, holds degrees from Whitworth University and the University of Miami, and is currently studying literature and religion at Yale Divinity School.
Dead Uncles by Ben Kline
Reviewed by Laura Rashley | October 26, 2021Driftwood Press, 2021Paperback, 37 pages, $7.99 In Ben Kline’s latest poetry chapbook, Dead Uncles: Poems, Folklore, Reverie, we’re cast into an environment that is both vast and incredibly specific, grounded yet otherworldly. Illusions are built into illusions, and reality becomes a question of perception and what we believe […]