Oct, 14 2019 | no responses
Ancient stories of transformation are again transformed by Rekdal’s telling, and it’s impossible to read their contemporized violence without the lens the #metoo movement has given us. For Rekdal, transformation is not simply progression, but fragmentation, and Nightingale stays honest to this truth.
Aug, 29 2019 | no responses
Forthcoming in November 2019 A magnifier praises what’s larger and a magnifier concentrates poisons. Brandon Krieg’s Magnifier is a book of spirits invoked by destroyers. It trains its gaze on the deep dependencies we are urged daily to hide from ourselves and interrogates the ways we insulate ourselves from the environmental and social degradations we […]
Aug, 22 2019 | no responses
Considering the weightiness of the subject matter—identity, love, language, and the limits of understanding—this collection is impressively and tidily organized, divided into three sections of roughly equal length. The poems are short but philosophically potent. With only one exception, the poems all fit on a single page.
At the Kinnegad Home for the Bewildered
Aug, 08 2019 | no responses
Throughout his new poems, Levine operates as a poetic pantheist, locating vitality in the ordinary and “extraordinary” alike.
Aug, 06 2019 | no responses
The most important thing about these edits is that the old words are not simply erased or supplanted by new words. The marks keep the original terms in view, even as they significantly qualify them.
Jul, 25 2019 | no responses
There are so many angles to loss, and as the speaker’s voice bellows in this collection, McKibbens reveals the complexity of pain—even when its face is anger.