Poetry Reviews

Tick-tick In the Drifting Dark: The Last Two Seconds by Mary Jo Bang

More than anything else, Mary Jo Bang’s newest volume of poetry – The Last Two Seconds from Graywolf Press – is concerned with time. Not chronological time, but… Read more “Tick-tick In the Drifting Dark: The Last Two Seconds by Mary Jo Bang”

Claudia Rankine’s National Book Award-winning Citizen: An American Lyric is a testament to how far we have to go as a nation to move past the racism… Read more “A Review of Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine”

it sounds better than it is, this business of surviving, making it through the wrong place at the wrong time and living to tell. – from the… Read more “A Review of Final Girl by Daphne Gottlieb”

I want to sit down for coffee with Patricia Lockwood. No, that’s not true. I want to throw back a few shots of whiskey with Patricia Lockwood,… Read more “Perfect Little Mouthfuls: Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals by Patricia Lockwood”

And faceless, I went to the car, pronounced: “The book will be called Rome.” Men in the seats Thinking I was odd or silly But I could still… Read more “Tunneling Towards a Ferocity: A Review of Rome by Dorothea Lasky”

Sarah Dowling’s Down is a book that draws us in with the intentional failure of its imagined voice. Not the failure of the book, mind you, but… Read more “What Can Make This Matter: Down by Sarah Dowling”

Edward Hirsch’s newest book Gabriel: A Poem is unlike any other book of poetry in recent memory. Hirsch has been an established and celebrated poet and critic for… Read more “A Review of Gabriel: A Poem by Edward Hirsch”

In her third volume of poetry, Blood Lyrics: Poems from Graywolf Press, Katie Ford a rough story, housing her poems within a sweeping arc across the length… Read more “Gutted and Rising: A Review of Blood Lyrics by Katie Ford”

A few years ago Tyler Knott Gregson wandered into an antique store near his home in Helena, Montana, and discovered a beat up old Remington typewriter for… Read more “Typewriter Sentiments: Tyler Knott Gregson’s Chasers of the Light”

Matthea Harvey’s new book If the Tabloids Are True What Are You? is possibly too clever for its own good, and I have no idea what it’s about. Naturally,… Read more “Mermaids and Glass Prisons: Matthea Harvey’s If the Tabloids Are True What Are You?”