Victor Martinez, Chicano Poet/Author Passed Way Feb. 18, 2011
On February 18 Mission District photographer Linda Wilson, long time staff member of El Tecolote, the bilingual newspaper of San Francisco, called me at home to let me know that…
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poetry
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The Air in the Cages is Dust
One of the great strengths of this book is Flynn’s refusal to luxuriate in self-importance. Instead, he displays a consistent awareness that the poetry of war is not war itself,…
Monstrous Poetry
Poets in Wisconsin are turning monstrous. The writer-artists behind the Monsters of Poetry reading series in Madison have been busy making self-portraits and collages that depict themselves — and the…
Like an Amputee’s Phantom Itch
Whether you’re an admirer or a stranger to her work, Rachel McKibbens awakens and haunts with selfless honesty.
An Open Letter from Claudia Rankine
Editor’s note: If you want some background on this, you can go to Claudia Rankine’s site and click on the “AWP” link. Dear friends, As many of you know I…
The Whole World Clanked Like an Iron Shovel
The horror of watching the self separate from the self—the schism of self-awareness—it’s almost vertigo-inducing. Kocot’s gift as a poet is being able to explain such complexity with such uncompromised…
Of Course They’re Staring
The poems in The Book of Frank capture moments, and they don’t explain themselves. But, cumulatively, they invoke a sense of what it is like to be almost supernaturally sensitive,…
The H.D. Book: A Clarion Call for all Artists and Writers
In school I took a class on female poets and was instantly taken with the poetry of H.D., especially her later work Trilogy, a savage and mythic poem about rediscovering…
A Conversation So Imperfectly Understood
Rosanna Warren’s tautly elegant poetry in her collection Ghost in a Red Hat captivates me. Warren does not aim for obscure language and obstructed meaning; she carefully and clearly reveals…
Glass Is Really a Liquid
The hard thing about these poems is that they make sense, fundamentally, but they’ve got a strange, skittering-away sense to them, a resistance to being pinned down.
Your Frills Are Made of Bone
The Haunted House… tumbles through a teenage-girl world, giddy and feverish, at times drunk on foiled friendships and empty kisses, and at others sober with the knowledge that this tumultuous…
The Foreign Skin of the Familiar
What’s most delightful is how Rader balances the heaviness of that observation against the lightness of the characters of Frog and Toad. Absurdity and lyricism, humor and serious contemplation, bump…