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.”
...more
Posts Tagged: book review
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.
...more
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.
...more
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?
...more
Raising the Dead: Claudia Castro Luna’s Killing Marías
The poems in Killing Marías sustain a deep reverence for women and are a call to action for the world.
...more
A Subjective Magic: Jenny Boully’s Betwixt-and-Between
Boully splays open her own torso and readers divine what they need to from the spill of her organs.
...more
Reclamation, Reassembly, and Recognition: Jasminne Méndez’s Night-Blooming Jasmin(n)e
What happens when the source of grief comes from within?
...more
Subtle Magic: Starfish by Sara Goodman
This book is a map, Dear Reader. And you are here.
...more
A Healing Exploration: Micah Perks’s True Love and Other Dreams of Miraculous Escape
Stories are the miracle, and the escape, promised by the book’s title.
...more
Revolutionary Anger: Rebecca Traister’s Good and Mad
The most important idea within the book is that our anger, in all its shapes, is justified.
...more
An Important Book: Inheriting the War edited by Laren McClung
There is no escape from the cradle of this shame.
...more
Unglued from Time: Shahriar Mandanipour’s Moon Brow
An enjoyable and thought-provoking read, Moon Brow trades on its striking and unusual formal features to allude to the complexities and consequences of war.
...more
A Thin-Bladed Grace: Kristin Chang’s Past Lives, Future Bodies
Each luminous metaphor lays claim over sadness or violence, remaking it.
...more
A Sense of God: She Would Be King by Wayétu Moore
Perhaps one of the most beautiful things Moore does is to give voice to those who would not or did not have a voice.
...more
Making a Nest within a Book: Kevin McLellan’s Ornitheology
In my reading, Ornitheology turns out to be a book of psalms.
...more
Hard-Earned, Essential Grace: Anaphora by Kevin Goodan
No elegy is an island and this elegy is no exception.
...more
Terrible Beauty: Diane Seuss’s Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl
…in every piece in the collection, Seuss reminds us that so much depends upon noticing.
...more
Three Strong Women: Lisa Rosenberg, Maw Shein Win, and Libby Burton
Welcome all three of these books with enthusiasm for what they do, and with shared possibilities for the ”craved world.”
...more
Dream Big: Hillary, Made Up by Marianne Kunkel
Hillary, Made Up is a complex feminist undertaking that undermines traditional notions of interpretation.
...more
Beautiful Evil: The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
Alaska attracts those looking to be free from the constraints of society.
...more
Struggling toward Truth: Porochista Khakpour’s Sick
Khakpour gathers courage, again and again, as she reaches into the most painful parts of her life, excavates them, and holds them up to the light.
...more
Learning to Grow Where Planted: Maggie Smith’s Good Bones
Part of looking closer is seeing what is hard to face, and part of having courage is addressing what seems futile.
...more
To Choose Music: Aja Gabel’s The Ensemble
The Ensemble offers its readers the chance to breathe the rarefied air of an elite pursuit.
...more
A Myth of Her Own Making: The Pisces by Melissa Broder
Broder opens up a fantastical vein to offer a glimpse at how we might find each other again.
...more
Faith and Identity: Fireworks in the Graveyard by Joy Ladin
To “ameliorate” the desire for death or the sense of self-annihilation, Ladin finds in religion a way of reconciliation, not only within herself, but also with her community and society at large.
...more
Going Higher: Unearthings by Wendy Chen
Chen’s sense of history is reason enough to appreciate her poetry, but equally thrilling is her language.
...more
Trust Us When We’re Sick: Maya Dusenbery’s Doing Harm
The systems created for men by men are not sufficient in caring for women. Different bodies and chemical makeups, of course, require different treatments.
...more
Uncovering Buried Roots: Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater
There are two ways to read Freshwater: there is the knowing and the unknowing.
...more
Wide-Eyed and Awed: Keegan Lester’s this shouldn’t be beautiful but it was & it was all I had so I drew it
Lester often weaves past and present, the personal and the vast into one poem, leaping between these seeming opposites.
...more
A Source of Life: Red Clocks by Leni Zumas
There’s a lot left unsaid between the women of Red Clocks; not even they know the extent to which they’re all connected.
...more