Still Wouldst Thou Sing: Nightingale by Paisley Rekdal
Figures from antiquity—those masks of learned, privileged poets—are rendered utterly contemporary, down to earth.
Reviews
2641 posts
Identity Politics and the English Language: Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times
Who “owns” the English language?
Justice by Seeing: Of Color by Jaswinder Bolina
But perhaps it is our want for firm ground that Bolina is challenging.
What We Need: Juan Felipe Herrera, Maw Shein Win, and John Freeman
Barbara Berman reviews Every Day We Get More Illegal, Storage Unit for the Spirit House, and The Park.
Learning to Be Haunted: Dennis James Sweeney’s Ghost/Home
We make a home, in other words, by letting in our ghosts.
Any Moment Is a Door: Nadia Colburn’s The High Shelf
Again, the red door stands open, allowing the world to enter.
Brief Moments Upon the Blank Page: Moyra Davey’s Index Cards
The collection enacts—even performs—its own coming into being.
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.
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.