book review
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The Sound of Beginning: Birthright by George Abraham
These poems present a challenge to the typically imposed strictures of ownership, narrative, and solution.
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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.
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The World Is on Fire: Living Weapon by Rowan Ricardo Phillips
A democratic art, the poet says, will take us through. Come November, vote.
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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?
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A Quintessential Quarantine Read: Paige Lewis’s Space Struck
Narratives, reflections—“bright particulars,” every one.
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Reclaiming History from the Bigots: Jill Lepore’s This America
History itself is not so conveniently tidy, and neither is this book.
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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.
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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.
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Gospel That Kicks Up the Dust: Neck of the Woods by Amy Woolard
Tenderness lies between the sharp and the sweet.
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What Is (and Isn’t) Held in the Light: Diane Zinna’s The All-Night Sun
Trauma’s wing conceals and reveals.
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Homage as Provocation: Karen Tei Yamashita’s Sansei and Sensibility
Pretend you are Austen. Enact an Austen novel. And what will happen?
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A Deeper Narrative: Tongo Eisen-Martin’s Heaven Is All Goodbyes
These are not poems to read quickly, but to return to repeatedly.