Kind by Gretchen Primack
Reviewed by Chloë Hanson | September 27, 2021Lantern Press, 2021Hardcover, 98 pages, $15.00 I first encountered Gretchen Primack’s work a few years ago, when a dear friend and colleague recommended the original publication of Kind to me in a poetry workshop. As a writer beginning to discuss nonhuman animals, their rights, and their lives in […]
There Is No Good Time for Bad News by Aruni Kashyap
Reviewed by Maggie Rue Hess | August 31, 2021Future Cycle Press, April 2021Paperback, 58 pages, $15.95 Reminding us that to turn your eyes away from suffering is to turn away from compassion, Aruni Kashyap wrote his unflinching collection of poems There is No Good Time for Bad News about the largely undocumented insurgency within Assam. […]
Hamlet Figura by Daniel Gabriel
Reviewed by Michael Sutherlin | April 22, 2021Dos Madres Press, 2020Paperback, 196 pages, $20.00 If you are looking for a cerebral investigation into the nature of language, Daniel Gabriel’s Hamlet Figura is for you. It is a single work divided into a series of 175 individual poems, each written in free verse and organized into […]
Magnolia Canopy Otherworld by Erin Carlyle
Reviewed by Rachel Bryan | April 13, 2021Driftwood Press, December 2020Paperback, 82 pages, $14.99 Erin Carlyle’s debut poetry collection Magnolia Canopy Otherworld opens with an epigraph out of Dorothy Allison’s 1992 novel Bastard Out of Carolina: “Family is family, but even love can’t keep people from eating at each other.” Like Bone Boatwright, Carlyle’s collection […]
My Name Is Romero by David A. Romero
Reviewed by Maggie Rue Hess | March 23, 2021Flowersong Press, 2020Paperback, 109 pages, $20 There are many occasions that prompt us to introduce ourselves: over the phone, in an email, at a business meeting, for a friendly get-together, on our first day at a new job. The typical introduction requires that we share our names […]
Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing by Julie Marie Wade
Reviewed by Emily Jalloul // March 17, 2020Mad Creek Books, 2020Paperback, 208 pages, $18.95 “Just An Ordinary Woman Breathing” is Julie Marie Wade’s eleventh book. Her others, a mix of poetry, lyric-essay, and memoir, have garnered wide praise, including winning a Lambda Literary Award, among others prizes. The voice and lyricism that exists in her […]
Skin Memory by John Sibley Williams
Reviewed by Rachel Harper // March 6, 2020The Backwaters Press, 2020Paperback, 84 pp. $15.95 Loss, the pain that accompanies such an experience, and the process of re-purposing that pain to a greater cause are concepts many authors attempt to grasp and grapple with through language; readers hope to catch a glimpse of themselves in the […]
The Many Names for Mother by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
Reviewed by Emily Bradley // December 2, 2019The Kent State University Press, 2019Paperback, 98 pages Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach’s The Many Names for Mother is a collection of bravery. By this, I do not mean merely that the poet herself is brave in sharing her art – though she is – or that her poetry looks the hardships […]
Infinity Standing Up by Drew Pisarra
Reviewed by Michael Sutherlin // November 4, 2019Capturing Fire Press, 2019Paperback, 68 pp. $10 Drew Pisarra takes on the topic of the modern on-again off-again relationship in his raw and clever collection of poems entitled Infinity Standing Up. The work is comprised of 40 Shakespearean sonnets divided into 5 sections. Despite the formal structure inherited from the […]
Fludde by Peter Mishler
Reviewed by Joseph LaBine // August 30, 2019 I first read Peter Mishler’s book of poetry, Fludde, in manuscript in 2015, and it called up my small secret memories: cubby holes at school, the feeling of a field under foot, the smell of well water, the length of a certain flight of stairs, a flood of […]