Author Archive
Saturday, December 10th, 2011
BEFORE I CAME HOME NAKED by Christina Olson
Review by Karen J. Weyant BEFORE I CAME HOME NAKED by Christina Olson Spire Press ISBN 978-1-934828-09-0 2010, 80 pp., $14.00 www.amazon.com In a world where writers complain that people just don’t read poetry, the title of Christina Olson’s first full length collection of poetry, Before I Came Home Naked will certainly catch a reader’s [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in E-Reviews by Megan
Thursday, November 10th, 2011
THE BLUE TOWER by Tomaž Šalamun
Review by Marc Jaffee THE BLUE TOWER by Tomaž Šalamun Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 215 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10003 ISBN 978-0-547-36476-6 2011, 96 pp., $22.00 www.hmhbooks.com Why do I love poetry? (What a loaded question.) I love it, for one, because the world is strange and surprising, and poetry illuminates the experience of [...]
No Comments » - Posted in E-Reviews by Megan
Sunday, October 30th, 2011
ORPHEUS ON THE RED LINE by Theodore Deppe
Review by Penelope Moffet ORPHEUS ON THE RED LINE by Theodore Deppe Tupelo Press P.O. Box 1767 North Adams, MA 01247 ISBN 978-1-932195-75-0 2009, 74 pp., $16.95 www.tupelopress.org Chance led me to the haunting and beautiful poems of Theodore Deppe, whose Orpheus on the Red Line was available for adoption at the summer 2011 Rattle [...]
No Comments » - Posted in E-Reviews by Megan
Tuesday, October 25th, 2011
HOODWINKED by David Hernandez
Review by Alejandro Escude HOODWINKED by David Hernandez Sarabande Books 2234 Dundee Road, Suite 200 Louisville, KY 40205 ISBN 13 978-1-932511-96-3 2011, 75 pp., $14.95 www.sarabandebooks.org I first came across the work of David Hernandez when I read “Mosul” in The Kenyon Review. I got that weird pang of jealousy mixed with awe every poet [...]
No Comments » - Posted in E-Reviews by Megan
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
TALKING INTO THE EAR OF A DONKEY by Robert Bly
Review by A.P. Maddox TALKING INTO THE EAR OF A DONKEY by Robert Bly Norton 500 Fifth Avenue New York, New York 10110 ISBN 978-0-939-08022-3 2011, 107 pp., $24.95 www.wwnorton.com It is surprising to me, now I think of it, that there aren’t more Robert Blys walking around. All I mean is poets who throw [...]
No Comments » - Posted in E-Reviews by Megan
Saturday, October 15th, 2011
DARK ARCHIVE by Laura Mullen
Review by Bruce Whiteman DARK ARCHIVE by Laura Mullen University of California Press 2120 Berkeley Way Berkeley, CA 94704-1012 ISBN 978-0-520-26886-9 2011, 134 pp., $22.95 http://www.ucpress.edu “…and the ghost always carries the message…that the gap between personal and social, public and private, objective and subjective is misleading in the first place. That is to say [...]
No Comments » - Posted in E-Reviews by Megan
Wednesday, October 5th, 2011
THE PARIS POEMS by Suzanne Burns
Review by Trina L. Drotar THE PARIS POEMS by Suzanne Burns BlazeVOX 303 Bedford Avenue Buffalo, NY 14216 USA ISBN 9781609640460 2010, 84 pp., $16.00 www.blazevox.org Suzanne Burns’ The Paris Poems is a tour of Paris via popular culture. Jim Morrison reappears throughout the collection while Louis Vuitton and Quasimodo figure prominently in others. Burns [...]
No Comments » - Posted in E-Reviews by Megan
Friday, September 30th, 2011
BLUE POODLE by Georgia Jones-Davis
Kathi Stafford BLUE POODLE by Georgia Jones-Davis Finishing Line Press P.O. Box 1626 Georgetown, Kentucky 40324 ISBN 1-59924-772-0 29 pp., $14.00 www.finishinglinepress.com Blue Poodle, a recently released chapbook of poems by Georgia Jones-Davis, provides the reader with a rich variety of images, woven together in surprising and provocative rhythms. Some of these poems focus on [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in E-Reviews by Megan
Sunday, September 25th, 2011
SAINT SINATRA by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell
Review by Catherine Wisniewski SAINT SINATRA by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell WordTech Communications P.O. Box 541106 Cincinnati, OH 45254-1106 ISBN 978-1936370337 2011, 100pp., $19.00 www.word-press.com Angela Alaimo O’Donnell’s latest book of poetry, Saint Sinatra and Other Poems, is at once both meditative and challenging. Throughout the collection, the poet-scholar imaginatively invokes the personalities of recognized and [...]
No Comments » - Posted in E-Reviews by Megan
Thursday, September 22nd, 2011
“Where Poems Go” by Chris Green
Chris Green WHERE POEMS GO In Tampa, Florida, Irene Ledbetter sits at her desk to write to me. She holds the magazine with my poem about my brother and his dead dog. She has two dogs herself and admits she has the habit of rescuing baby rabbits, baby birds…even unhatched eggs. She writes to me [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Poems by Megan
Wednesday, September 21st, 2011
“Poison” by Terry Godbey
Terry Godbey POISON My grandmother, a wisecracker, burned brightly at the head of the table on our summer visits. My parents blistered and turned away, missing her winks as she wagged her tongue at my mother and called my father by his last name. I indulged her with endless games of cards, sneaking sips of [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in Poems by Megan
Tuesday, September 20th, 2011
THE ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES AND OTHER POEMS by Ernesto Cardenal
Review by Magdalena Edwards THE ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES AND OTHER POEMS by Ernesto Cardenal Translated and Introduced by John Lyons Foreword by Anne Waldman Texas Tech University Press BOX 41037 Lubbock, Texas 79409 ISBN 978-0-89672-689-5 2011, 141 pp., $21.95 http://ttupress.org/ I first read the Nicaraguan poet, Catholic priest, and social activist Ernesto Cardenal (1925 [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in E-Reviews by Megan
Sunday, September 18th, 2011
“My Grandmother’s Cow” by Maya Jewell Zeller
Maya Jewell Zeller MY GRANDMOTHER’S COW My grandmother didn’t have a cow, but if she did, it would have been a Holstein, cross-bred with a Friesian, because good Marguerite herself was slim but sturdy and beautiful in black-and-white. And because she was Catholic, it would have been a dairy cow; it would have sustained her [...]
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Saturday, September 17th, 2011
“Make a Wish Foundation” by Adam Michael Wright
Adam Michael Wright MAKE A WISH FOUNDATION None of us thought he’d make Disney World in time, which is what he asked for before he died. A fever steered Jonah, Mariah’s brother, toward extinction on a mattress in Biloxi. He was nine; wouldn’t [...]
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Friday, September 16th, 2011
“The Petty Snow” by Scott Withiam
Scott Withiam THE PETTY SNOW Winter’s first snowflakes stuck together on their way down. There were so many people upon which they fell who were not sticking together. There was an unsnapped driving glove fallen to the wet slop, looking like a tired tongue hanging out. People awkwardly slipped away from each other, bodies taut. [...]
