book review
-

The Fraught Nature of Belonging: Nathalie Handal’s Life in a Country Album
Each poem opens a window into cities and vocabularies of exile.
-

Calling It Like It Is: Leland Cheuk’s No Good Very Bad Asian
No Good Very Bad Asian is a letter to the future, to a reality that has begun taking shape in Maryann but has yet to be fully realized.
-

To Survive the World: Build Yourself a Boat by Camonghne Felix
She wants us to know the mental and emotional labor is exhausting.
-

Exceptional Pain and Power: Lima :: Limón by Natalie Scenters-Zapico
See how visceral? Before I opened this book, I felt I was already inside it.
-

Metamorphoses: The Uninhabitable Earth and The Overstory
And then, from this scorched landscape, transformation.
-

Scientific, Healing Magic: How to Know the Flowers by Jessica Smith
A poem by Jessica Smith yields the feeling that atoms of meaning vibrate, then come together.
-

Both Reckoning and Embrace: Dorianne Laux’s Only As The Day Is Long
As the book continues, [Laux] traces a growing understanding of loss.
-

Paying Attention: Elizabeth Jacobson’s Not Into the Blossoms and Not Into the Air
Looking can be a way to honor, a way to pay our respects.
-

A Divine Comedy of Experience: Hannah Ensor’s Love Dream with Television
Art is a fickle running buddy, legacy jumps out unexpectedly, and love is too serious not to joke about.
-

Food in Times of Need: Eat Joy edited by Natalie Eve Garrett
This book begs to be flipped through and read with leisure.
-

A Kind of Bliss: Odes to Lithium by Shira Erlichman
In these moments, we are there with her, to witness the work of staying sane.
