Closing the Loop: Sophia Shalmiyev’s Mother Winter
I am mother. I am child. I am mother. The overlapping, hard-won truth—victim either way, saved either way.
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Peripheral Terror: Total Recall by Samantha Giles
There is horror in how a memory can be altered or rendered “false” by exterior forces.
Leaving a Record: Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive
How does what we choose to document dictate whose lives matter?
Delicious Courage: Lynn Melnick’s Landscape with Sex and Violence
Melnick’s craft is in the extreme language and unfamiliar syntax which blends a brew that, while bitter, is also intoxicating.
Both/And: Republic Café by David Biespiel
How is one to make sense of making catastrophe and making love in the same moment?
Through the Translator’s Lens: Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough’s Objects of Affection
For Hryniewicz-Yarbrough, language provides a stronger connection with the past than nationality alone.
An Atlas of Unmappables: Jennifer S. Cheng’s Moon: Letters, Maps, Poems
Reading Moon was a hypnotic experience for me, simultaneously immersive and elusive.
Urgent Connections: Negative Space and Too Afraid to Cry
There’s no such thing as too much of this kind of light, especially in dark times.
Violence and Tenderness: The Explosive Expert’s Wife by Shara Lessley
Lessley's poems remind us: “Because to cry's / a sign, to cry is proof, / there's life.”
Not a Blueprint: Casey Gerald’s There Will Be No Miracles Here
[T]his book is Gerald’s attempt to construct his own narrative as best as he can, and it’s successful.
The Illusion of Wholeness: Sophie Collins’s Who is Mary Sue?
When reading this book, expect your notions of speaker—and even what a book of poetry is—to be challenged.
Unsung Choices: Blue Rose by Carol Muske-Dukes
Can women ever fully escape the restrictions upon them, the risk to their bodies that comes from being born female?