In restoring the words of Jesus to their rightful poetry, and making an excellent case for this necessity, Barnstone brings their music, passion, ethics and intellectual rigor into a more complete view.

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It is clear from Dove’s introduction to the anthology, and from her selections, that she just wanted an engaging, informative, high -quality collection. She succeeded.

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[Peter] Gizzi’s particular gift is to posit that shifting location where senses meet the terrible and the sublime, where political portent or its brittle actualities announce themselves in various configurations.

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 Marge Piercy’s unflinching clarity of vision continues to be the kind of sturdy example so vital to literature. She has long been teaching and in the public arena, on the humane side of almost every contemporary issue. …more

Ideally, critics and teachers are humbled by their vocations and the artistry the vocations expose them to, encouraging effort to stay fresh , emotionally resonant and intellectually worthwhile. Say yes to all of the above when the subject is Di Piero. …more

Makeshift Instructions for Vigilant Girls is a case study for how to observe, recall and (possibly) create from whole cloth with clarity that never becomes brittle. …more

Notes From Irrelevance is a long weave of sentence shimmers with influences of someone who has read and absorbed a rich range, from classics to the most experimental, making each phrasing kinetic with questions about the way he has experienced sound and the sight of letters. …more

Djordjevic’s rhythms provide a strong scaffolding throughout this powerful, necessary volume. In Oranges and Snow we have an outstanding example of the literary enterprise. …more

Becoming a Woman Poet is brisk, each indicator of geography reinforcing the urge to break barriers. …more

Dunn doesn’t do dazzle, though he duly honors those whose large, obsessive stars have burned brightly. …more

Everything Ed Roberson writes has an encyclopedic backscope, condensed into impeccable art. …more

The poems in Signs And Wonders have a moral and structural grace that is sometimes fueled by political anger or collective sorrow. …more

Vogelsang is sometimes so restless its hard not to wonder how and when he sleeps, and he makes the reader confront the question of whether sleep, or any kind of ease, is a valid way to spend time. …more

Cedar Sigo avoids the usual pitfalls when exploring queer identity, minority identity and a political perspective thinking progressives can work with. He isn’t trite. He is never overwrought, and he brings a kinetic ardor to every line. …more

Long time Rumpus Reviewer Barbara Berman examines the two latest offerings from critic Helen Vendler, one on Emily Dickinson and the other on the last books from five of the 20th century’s finest poetic voices. …more

Watson’s skill here, as on so many pages, is to be accessible and kinetic while seeing something new in a common experience. Her sight is so unique, her inner editor so keen, that she brings a prismatic freshness to what eye and her “dogged heart” confront. …more

Many poems, and many more lines, couplets and quatrains in Opal Sunset are superb, making their lesser companions wan imitations of what Clive James can really do when his interior editor and his varied gifts unite. …more

Maxine Kumin’s poems about the specifics of life on the farm with family, and relationships to fish, fowl, horse and vegetable matter, not to mention lovely liquids and unappealing solids, are consistently satisfying and sometimes deliciously entertaining. …more

Carl Phillips is a masterful maker of sweet visual dances that are never cloying. …more

Laird’s steps are sure, his undermusic and undercurrents consistently strong. On Purpose is a slim volume that contains multitudes. …more

A particular joy of Mysteriosos and Other Poems is the apprehension of current—biological, electric and historical, and in other forms– that distinguishes the most rigorously thrumming beats from their sallow imitators. …more

Foreign aspects sometimes have a familiar whiff, and not just to Simic fans who have seen proof of his admission that Serbian poetry has affected his own. They have a familiar whiff because a number of poets in this collection have translated Whitman, T. S. Eliot, Apollinnaire, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath and Cafavfy, among others. …more

In A Meteorologist in the Promised Land, Becka Mara McKay reminds us that every language is a unique translation of a combination of desire and thought, both of which have complicated, individual histories. …more

Sherod Santos’s  poems  demonstrate profound, unwavering discipline,  a restless ear, and a commitment to witness.   He  is serious but never pompous, substantial without being ponderous.

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Kay Ryan has been compared to Emily Dickinson, and I like to imagine Dickinson and Marianne Moore reading her with sly commiseration. Unlike some poets with recognizable styles, Ryan does not write the same poem again and again, and her sharp eye is both benevolent and unflinching.

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What Jelloun proves throughout this book is that he has not let language(s) fail him or the people, places and historical moments he memorializes, making dates that are not headlines as important as front page news.

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B. H. Fairchild fuses mundane with spiritual in resolute ways, as “in the silent prayer for the grace of rain abundant,” a glorious line that would have been less so if the words “rain” and “abundant” were switched …more

A collection like Ohio Violence is best consumed in small doses, so that its imaginative density, which is never ponderous, can be absorbed.

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Joanna Rawson is a piercingly passionate, necessary artist.   The riches in Unrest are as demanding as they are beautiful. …more

The Next Settlement has a rock-solid American quality that compares favorably to William Carlos Williams.   Think Plymouth and ocean waves constantly changing, hypnotic in part because of the mysteries beneath.

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