Yes, and: Simulacra by Airea D. Matthews
Matthews is a poet of multivalent ways and hows, an artist at home in the riddle of refusal.
Reviews
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The Unreality Marches On: Ice by Anna Kavan
Kavan’s masterful and exacting prose never lets us forget that violence has to do with the human—specifically with the man—starting with the violence of language itself.
A Book of Absences: Jehanne Dubrow’s Dots & Dashes
[W]hat’s so startling about these poems is how Dubrow spends her poetic energies grappling with the classical treatments of the past to thrilling and unexpected effects.
Come Together through Bodies: Jennifer Colville’s Elegies for Uncanny Girls
The female body here is as palpable as image. As the images and objects transform, so does the female’s body.
A New Understanding of Experience: David Biespiel’s The Education of a Young Poet
This book will make you appreciate poetry more. And if you’re a poet, it will make you proud to be one.
Shifting Histories: Belladonna by Daša Drndić
The past may be riddled with holes, but it cannot be dispensed with as easily as possessions.
The Dangers of the Earth’s Extremes: Jessica Goodfellow’s Whiteout
The poems in Whiteout pull together an array of topics and well-developed craft, making it a complex book emotionally, thematically, and technically.
A Zombie Existence: Fleur Jaeggy’s I Am the Brother of XX
Unlike clothing, which can disguise the state of the soul, a person’s eyes reveal the truth.
Stitching America Back Together: A Long Late Pledge by Wendy Willis
It is late for our country. We must look back in dialogue with the founders, examine a patched-together country, an embattled flag, and consider how to stop floundering.
The Strain of Reality: Reset by Ellen Pao
A woman is simultaneously too many things and not enough at all, forcing her vibrancy to smudge into an opaque blur.
Both Outsider and Participant: Thousand Star Hotel by Bao Phi
In Thousand Star Hotel, the bilingual writer’s struggle with expressing himself in English becomes a metaphor for the immigrant’s struggle with navigating the host nation’s hostile-yet-lucrative social terrain.
The Universal Tether of Identity: Caca Dolce by Chelsea Martin
At its core, the collection is recollected through a loose chronology of memoir essays, all of which will appeal to readers’ younger selves: who were we when we were teenagers and who are we now?