Beloved Names and Incantatory Powers: heidi andrea restrepo rhodes’s The Inheritance of Haunting
And so it is an exorcism, yes, but also a song.
Reviews
2621 posts
The Cost of Liberation: Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn
Patsy’s imagined freedom in America, she discovers almost immediately, was an illusion.
The Sound of Beginning: Birthright by George Abraham
These poems present a challenge to the typically imposed strictures of ownership, narrative, and solution.
Identity as a Hall of Mirrors: Descent by Lauren Russell
This book is a marriage of the real world and the imagination, the nexus of nonfiction and fiction.
The World Is on Fire: Living Weapon by Rowan Ricardo Phillips
A democratic art, the poet says, will take us through. Come November, vote.
The Privilege of Anxiety: Mark O’Connell’s Notes from an Apocalypse
What does our “future-dread,” as O’Connell puts it, show us about our own lives in the present?
A Quintessential Quarantine Read: Paige Lewis’s Space Struck
Narratives, reflections—“bright particulars,” every one.
Reclaiming History from the Bigots: Jill Lepore’s This America
History itself is not so conveniently tidy, and neither is this book.
The Authentic Self: I Live in the Country & other dirty poems by Arielle Greenberg
Every poem in I Live in the Country sells what it’s craving.
Girl Power: Quan Barry’s We Ride Upon Sticks
But this is We Ride Upon Sticks: someone’s perm falls out, someone becomes prom queen.
Gospel That Kicks Up the Dust: Neck of the Woods by Amy Woolard
Tenderness lies between the sharp and the sweet.
What Is (and Isn’t) Held in the Light: Diane Zinna’s The All-Night Sun
Trauma’s wing conceals and reveals.