Robin Coste Lewis’s National Book Award-winning Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems is a powerful collection that beautifully blends the personal and the political. The book is organized… Read more “A Review of Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems by Robin Coste Lewis”
Tag: Poetry
Two Ways to Lose a Child
Katie Ford’s Blood Lyrics and Edward Hirsch’s Gabriel: A Poem were among my favorite poetry collections of 2014, and both work on the same heartrending theme: the loss, or potential loss,… Read more “Two Ways to Lose a Child”
A Review of Felicity: Poems by Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver’s newest collection of poetry is a simple one, and as lovely and as gently insightful as we’ve come to expect from one of our greatest… Read more “A Review of Felicity: Poems by Mary Oliver”
A Review of Application for Release from the Dream by Tony Hoagland
In his newest poetry collection, Application for Release from the Dream (Graywolf Press), Tony Hoagland comes across as a bit of a cranky old cuss, but instead of waving… Read more “A Review of Application for Release from the Dream by Tony Hoagland”
A Review of Stay: Prose Poems by Kathleen McGookey
Stay. In Kathleen McGookey’s new prose poetry collection of that title (Press 53) the word has several meanings. In the book’s dealings with grief and the loss of loved… Read more “A Review of Stay: Prose Poems by Kathleen McGookey”
Childhood and Mortality in Two Very Different Books
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the way childhood memories tease and flirt with our sense of mortality. I’ve read two books recently that speak to… Read more “Childhood and Mortality in Two Very Different Books”
Dubious Lexicon: A Review of Four-Legged Girl by Diane Seuss
I feel like I’ve been shoving the pit of Four-Legged Girl around with my nose for weeks like my cat when she’s unsure if she’s able and… Read more “Dubious Lexicon: A Review of Four-Legged Girl by Diane Seuss”
Tender and Wild: A Review of John Burnside’s Black Cat Bone
In The Fair Chase, the extended opening poem of John Burnside’s latest volume of poetry, the narrator hunts a strange creature through the woods and across the countryside. The poem… Read more “Tender and Wild: A Review of John Burnside’s Black Cat Bone”
A Review of Gregory Pardlo’s Digest
“All the gods fettered to the machinery of our routine lives” That’s the final line of the poem All God’s Chillun from Greg Pardlo’s newest volume of poetry, 2014’s… Read more “A Review of Gregory Pardlo’s Digest”
A Review of The Tijuana Book of the Dead by Luis Alberto Urrea
Despairing of God I went to the desert to seek my own saint. – from Sonoran Desert Sutras The surface of Luis Alberto Urrea’s newest volume of… Read more “A Review of The Tijuana Book of the Dead by Luis Alberto Urrea”
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