Discrepancies

Photo by Torbjørn Helgesen on Unsplash   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow . . . —Gerard Manley Hopkins The place under the awning             where it hasn’t rained. The seat belts in the taxi all             with puzzling or hidden buckles. The daffodils inside my shadow.             The glass of melted ice. The spiderweb that […]

Rhythmic Chant

Photo by michael weir on Unsplash   I look at my childhood & imagine what isn’t there archived                         blank pages partially erased artifacts we all live in a barter system trading our favorite worst memories I social you a tongue I appeal you a slanted pear orchard throat                     & we share it gladly I research […]

A Duration

It seems it’s been taking me longer and longer to complete these reviews lately, and not for lack of interest or quality of the work but rather a reluctance to leave the work behind. I relish such time and space where the day is not accounted by such mean labor counts of the work clock […]

Your Kingdom

In her tenth book of poetry, Your Kingdom, Eleni Sikelianos offers an exploration of life’s evolution from stardust to small-celled organism to humankind, with its attendant extinguishing forces. For Sikelianos, the evolution of language complicates this narrative, as past meanings fail to fill the holes that humanity is insistently creating. As such, Your Kingdom attempts […]

Mountain Amnesia

  In Mountain Amnesia, Thompson’s poems rebuild a new world—and self—in the wake of destruction and loss. Influenced by the landscape of rural Appalachia, these poems depict a nature relentlessly working on its own disappearance for survival. Decaying plants and animal remains are housed in the same world as ramps and bellflowers on the cusp of […]

Her Scant State

Barbara Tomash’s new collection erases Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady. From the outset, it’s a compelling project. What happens when you erase a novel that itself claims to be a portrait? When you manipulate the materials that aim to convey a person’s character? Or a character’s person? The cover image of the collection […]

Wave House

In her sixth book, Wave House, Elizabeth Arnold’s unpredictable poems mimic the incalculable movements of a world in flux due to social inequity, political instability, and climate uncertainty. Far-flung regions of the world take center stage, and Florida is a place that the speaker never wishes to return. Time is merely a suggestion, and the […]

The Corrected Version

This debut collection is a fascinating study in form and a powerful meditation on family. Rosanna Young Oh grew up just miles from where I have lived most of my life, but a world away. I probably purchased food in her parents’ market but likely did not see them. Their invisibility is part of the […]

Night Logic

Matthew Gellman’s Night Logic emerges at a time when states like Florida are going to great lengths to silence and censor LGBTQ+ voices. Brief yet exquisite, its poems portray a family riddled by loss and a young son questioning not only his family role but also his sexuality. Packed with coming-of-age awareness and a desire […]

Door

The many doors within Ann Lauterbach’s dazzling eleventh volume, Door (Penguin, 2023), open onto mythic dreamscapes and echoic worlds of vibrant sound. Seven poems in the volume share the name “DOOR,” and almost every page returns to this image, as though knocking and knocking at the various available meanings that could open. In a conversation […]