Madness, Rack, and Honey by Mary Ruefle
Madness, Rack, and Honey is a gift from a rigorous intellect, unflinching critic, and a big old sloppy heart. Ruefle has created a work of poetry from the daunting task of writing about it.
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Citizen by Aaron Shurin
Aaron Shurin writes piercingly lovely poetry that ‘s multidimensional and insists on being read aloud, though its eloquence is equally powerful on the page without sound...
Across the Land and the Water by W. G. Sebald
In Sebald’s Across the Land and Water, the theme is clear. In these collections, we have named men and women (names) traveling, staying in hotels, unanchored, exiled and lost, seemingly forever, from their home.
Long Division by Alan Michael Parker
Parker’s voice is so singular and strong that I don’t question it, even when it relies on wit, and in return, Parker rewards me for following him when I least expect it.
An Individual History by Michael Collier
Collier’s poems refuse to submit to a culture that has come to hold the individual suspect or in contempt. Many offer poignant but unsentimental family portraits made with vivid detail, with images that are remembered, hence recovered and immortalized.
Percussion Grenade by Joyelle McSweeney
McSweeney asks us to inhabit the conflicting edges of that reality, mouthing the power and joy that come with degeneracy.
Double Shadow by Carl Phillips
Double Shadow seems to find the poet at mid-breath, or in a time of transition where the voice may be in flux from previous work; but the watchful eye, and the careful hand that crafts these verses, is still ever-present.
Madame X by Darcie Dennigan
Madame X pilots the idea that the line between reality and dream is not so much collapsible as it is meant to be collapsed.
Watchword by Pura López Colomé
There is spiritual alchemy at work here, making one wish this piece, and many others, could be chanted by choruses taking turns, in both languages, with an audience not responding audibly between poems.
Sinead O’Connor and Her Coat of a Thousand Bluebirds by Neil de la Flor and Maureen Seaton
It’s 1990. I’ve shut the door to my bedroom, like any self-respecting teenage girl, to listen to my new CD—the one I ordered for a penny from one of those…
The Silhouettes, by Lily Ladewig
I’m fat. No matter where it stations itself then—against the sunset, unto the dawn, in the most awake and aware of lights at the gas station or drive-thru—my silhouette is…
Enigma and Light, by David Mutschleener
Every once in a while, when I’m reading something, sorting through the words in a half-daze, my brain will just click. I’ll get it. I’ll take on an understanding of…