February 22, 2012

Steady, My Gaze by Marie-Elizabeth Mali

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Metta Sáma reviews Marie-Elizabeth Mali’s “Steady, My Gaze”: “Mali’s poems are deceitful: sizzling and quiet, brash and compassionate. Mali’s debut is a delight because it is more curious than afraid, more ‘twists and turns’ and seeking than absolute and all-knowing.”

Posted Under: Poetry Reviews

The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart: Poems by Deborah Digges

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LouAnn Muhm reviews Deborah Digges’ final poetry collection, The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart. Muhm writes in her review: “Writing a review of a posthumous collection from a well-loved poet is a daunting task. What is there to say that is not elegiac praise? How to know which poems are as the poet conceived them, and which are constructed from unfinished notes and drafts? There is an unevenness in this collection. Is it due to the untimely death of the poet before the collection was finished? Could it be showing the poet’ s descent toward her apparent suicide? There is no way to know.” Read more from this review.

Posted Under: Poetry Reviews

Building the Barricade and other poems by Anna Swir

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Val B. Russell reviews a new translation of Anna Swir’s poetry collection, Building the Barricade and other Poems (Calypso Editions, 2011). In the review, Russell writes: “Amid the blood and guts rebellion of every war against oppression that there has ever been, you will always find the courage and devotion of the poet. In as much as an historian records the factual account of the circumstances of the ravages of war, the poet internalizes the individual experience of armed conflict, thus preserving the humanity lost in the debris of brutality. It was in such an atmosphere of upheaval and suffering that Polish poet Anna Swir collected her own images.” Read more about this courageous poet and her collection.

Posted Under: Poetry Reviews

The Sonic Imperative in the Prose Poem: a review of Elizabeth Colen’s Money for Sunsets

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Money for Sunsets Steel Toe Books, 2010 Years ago I read Eve Alexandra’s The Drowned Girl and felt powerfully, utterly right about the prose poem: here is a live site of fragmentation and fracture, an active agent of lyric and syntactic invention. The prose poem allows for a poem to be disassociative and coherent, to [...]

Posted Under: Poetry Reviews

Apparition Wren by Maureen Aslop

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Main Street Rag, 2007 We’re often trained to think of titles as the entryway to the poem; after all, it’s the first thing the eyes (are supposed to) land on when first encountering a poem. Some of us (renegades that we are) choose to save the poem for last or to meet it somewhere in [...]

Posted Under: Poetry Reviews

Notes from The Red Zone by Christina Pacosz

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Review by Leslie Hayertz Number 1: The Seven Kitchens Press ReBound Series, 2009 I first reviewed Notes from The Red Zone, Christina Pacosz’s gem of a chapbook from Seal Press, in the Fall 1983 issue of Calyx. Now, almost twenty-seven years later, I revisit these eight poems, pleased that they have found new life on [...]

Posted Under: Poetry Reviews

Does Your Mama Know? : An Anthology of Black Lesbian Coming Out Stories

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Review by Georgia Ann Banks-Martin 2nd Edition edited by Lisa C. Moore RedBone Press, 2009 The True Self Discovered and The World Confronted In 1996 Lisa C. Moore, the founder of Red Bone Press, published a collection of stories called Does Your Mama Know? : An Anthology of Black Lesbian Coming Out Stories. The stories [...]

Posted Under: Poetry Reviews

Light and Trials of Light by Cynthia Reeser

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Finishing Line Press, 2010 Reviewed by Georgia Ann Banks-Martin Cynthia Reeser is a poet, visual artist, musician, and the Founding Editor of Prick of the Spindle. Her new collection of poems, Light and Trials of Light is a chapbook published by Finishing Line Press earlier this year. The collection is comprised of twenty poems which [...]

Posted Under: Poetry Reviews

Historical Imperatives in Arisa White’s Disposition for Shininess and Sara Veglahn’s Closed Histories

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Closed Histories Noemi Press, 2008 Disposition for Shininess (not pictured) Factory Hollow Press, 2008 Arisa White’s Disposition for Shininess and Sara Veglahn’s Closed Histories are two incredibly different chapbooks from two seemingly (on the page) different writers. While White’s poetics veer towards the lyric narrative, Veglahn’s work is determinedly lyric, with narratives always harkening in [...]

Posted Under: Poetry Reviews

Box of Surprises by Teresa Peipins

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Finishing Line Press, 2009 Review by Jamie Elizabeth Marko The question of identity is a constant struggle for most Americans. We boldly declare our heritage, if we are lucky enough to know it, assuming that our ancestral homes innately impart some deeper meaning to our sense of self. What does it mean to be Irish? [...]

Posted Under: Poetry Reviews
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