Books
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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.
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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.
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Reclamation, Reassembly, and Recognition: Jasminne Méndez’s Night-Blooming Jasmin(n)e
What happens when the source of grief comes from within?
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An Important Book: Inheriting the War edited by Laren McClung
There is no escape from the cradle of this shame.
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A Thin-Bladed Grace: Kristin Chang’s Past Lives, Future Bodies
Each luminous metaphor lays claim over sadness or violence, remaking it.
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New-Old, Old-New: Erica Dawson’s When Rap Spoke Straight to God
Dawson plays with many tropes—light and dark, the spiritual vs. the corporeal—while questioning the everyday myths that surround us.
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Making a Nest within a Book: Kevin McLellan’s Ornitheology
In my reading, Ornitheology turns out to be a book of psalms.
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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.
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Form as Container: Samantha Zighelboim’s The Fat Sonnets
Zighelboim almost has to break the form into pieces in order to speak; a fourteen-word poem is really only the echo of a sonnet.
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Dream Big: Hillary, Made Up by Marianne Kunkel
Hillary, Made Up is a complex feminist undertaking that undermines traditional notions of interpretation.
