A Poetics of Questions: The Bower by Connie Voisine
To learn is perhaps Voisine’s primary goal in writing the poems in The Bower.
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Posts Tagged: poetry review
Not Looking Away: The State She’s In by Lesley Wheeler
But look at this poet-speaker speaking the unspeakable!
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A Language for Extinction: Zaina Alsous’s A Theory of Birds
And if you ask of her to come to you, her answer is refusal.
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The Violent and the Sensual: original kink by Jubi Arriola-Headley
Violence can be turned around, turned into pleasure, or an act of freedom, or an act of defiance.
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In and of the Wreck: Together in a Sudden Strangeness
In its imagery and mood, the collection feels distinctly April.
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The Worlds We Inhabit: Home: New Arabic Poems
These writers expand the meaning of the word home by virtue of their lives and their writing.
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Interrogating Language: Carlos Andrés Gómez’s Fractures
Language enacts violence through manipulation.
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Barbara Berman’s 2020 Holiday Poetry Shout-Out
Barbara Berman reviews four books in her 2020 Holiday Poetry Shout-Out
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Playing at the Edges of Form: Alexandria Hall’s Field Music
The pages of Alexandria Hall’s debut collection, Field Music, are liquid.
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A Holiday in Hell: Lauren Tivey’s Moroccan Holiday
If you’re going to Hell, bring a good guide.
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Documenting Existence: Deed by Justin Wymer
Wymer is grappling with survival, with the cost of the duplicity of identity.
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Still Wouldst Thou Sing: Nightingale by Paisley Rekdal
Figures from antiquity—those masks of learned, privileged poets—are rendered utterly contemporary, down to earth.
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Wistful Intimacies: Homie by Danez Smith
Could I be one of Smith’s homies? I would like to be.
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What We Need: Juan Felipe Herrera, Maw Shein Win, and John Freeman
Barbara Berman reviews Every Day We Get More Illegal, Storage Unit for the Spirit House, and The Park.
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Any Moment Is a Door: Nadia Colburn’s The High Shelf
Again, the red door stands open, allowing the world to enter.
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Beloved Names and Incantatory Powers: heidi andrea restrepo rhodes’s The Inheritance of Haunting
And so it is an exorcism, yes, but also a song.
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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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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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A Quintessential Quarantine Read: Paige Lewis’s Space Struck
Narratives, reflections—“bright particulars,” every one.
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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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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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A Deeper Narrative: Tongo Eisen-Martin’s Heaven Is All Goodbyes
These are not poems to read quickly, but to return to repeatedly.
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What Could Be: All Its Charms by Keetje Kuipers
The decision to have a child is fraught at the best of times.
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Rites of Passage: Steven Toussaint’s Lay Studies
We are liturgical animals, Toussaint’s poems suggest, designed to satisfy some ultimate desire with worship.
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A Fantastic Communion: Renaissance Normcore by Adèle Barclay
Salt—the speaker’s only remains, after she dives into the ocean and sets herself free of the past.
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Observations of an Inquisitive Mind: Fruit by Bruce Snider
These are not poems of self-pity. Far from it.
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Straining Toward “Memory Care”: Victoria Chang’s Obit
For Chang, figurative language proves unsatisfactory when compared to the depth of her grief.
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Mothers and Daughters: Girl by Veronica Golos
Bodies become something to escape from or leave behind.
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Let Our Rage Become a Storm: Kelly Grace Thomas’s Boat Burned
In this collection, women are “vesseled,” carrying the burdens of our culture.
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A Cave of Catharsis: Code by Charlotte Pence
Grief sneaks up on you, and so does this book.
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