Posts by author
Barbara Berman
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It’s Just My Books I’m Burning!
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.
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A Journey With Two Maps
Becoming a Woman Poet is brisk, each indicator of geography reinforcing the urge to break barriers.
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The Unforgiving Cinderblock
Dunn doesn’t do dazzle, though he duly honors those whose large, obsessive stars have burned brightly.
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The Crash Scene of Species Extinction
Everything Roberson writes has an encyclopedic backscope, condensed into impeccable art.
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New Rituals for Curbside Healing
The poems in Signs And Wonders have a moral and structural grace that is sometimes fueled by political anger or collective sorrow.
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A Smidge of Confusion, A Glow of Fear
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.
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I Remember a Black Fog
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.
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Two Books from Helen Vendler
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.
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Hammer and Landslide, an Exhilaration
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…
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Soften the Razor’s Edge, the Reign of Terror
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.
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Where I Live
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.
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It Begins to Look Like Courtesy
Carl Phillips is a masterful maker of sweet visual dances that are never cloying.