book review
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A Tightrope Act: Frozen Charlotte by Susan de Sola
It’s de Sola’s genuineness in portraying this tightrope act that is Frozen Charlotte’s chief virtue.
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Frenetic, Excitable, and Direct: Sylvie Baumgartel’s Song of Songs
This poem lets her—the speaker and Baumgartel—be too much.
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Everything Is Alive: Dunce by Mary Ruefle
Ruefle’s memories are as alive as the bodies holding them.
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On Loss of Land and Loss of Girlhood: Taneum Bambrick’s Vantage
Girlhood remains, like the land, a constant site of male fascination, desire, and violence.
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The Joypain of Parenting: Lydia Kiesling’s The Golden State
This is both the exercise and exorcism of motherhood.
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Inhabitation and Invocation: Candice Wuehle’s Death Industrial Complex
The speaker must believe in transience, in shapeshifting without permission.
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Queer Logic: Females and My Autobiography of Carson McCullers
“Everyone is female, and everyone hates it.” A provocation. An invitation.
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Man vs Man vs Nature: Beyond the Sea by Paul Lynch
So begins an odyssey of survival. Will they make it?
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For the Love of Dogs: Jennifer Finney Boylan’s Good Boy
In this sense, [the dogs] are a perfect foil for the conflicted young author.
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The Joy of Play: Every Writer Has a Thousand Faces (10th Anniversary Ed.) by David Biespiel
Biespiel offers a number of best practices—not just for writing poems, but for living a creative life.
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Intimate and Vast: Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz
This is stunning work—painful, embodied, and glorious.
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We Will Not Be Contained: Pretty Bitches and Too Much
There will always be another word used against us.