What makes these poems so intensely moving, so worthy of an adoration to match, is the unflinching dedication to be complicated—to be whole and true in all ways, when it makes us satisfied and when it makes us hurt, often in the same breath. 

As poets­­­­—non-journalists—we are frequently caught between conflicting expectations for our art. We are told not to be too blunt in our politics on the page, lest we dull the pen. We are told poetry is not enough in a time of crisis, is not useful, is self-satisfied and indulgent. It is not marching in the […]

In the beginning, Wimberley struggles to mourn the loss of home, father, and country. And by the end, he emerges from the trauma with the intent to preserve himself.

These poems illuminate the seemingly endless cycles of violence that perpetuate government-sanctioned surveillance and incarceration, particularly on working class young men.

By presenting the reader with twenty-five different translations of the same poem—which deliberately raises questions about what it means for multiple poems to have “sameness,” or to come from the same “source” poem—de la Torre implicitly argues for the translations as a sort of palimpsest or layering-over.

That seems to be what Phillips sets out to do, to keep beginning, and that seems to be what he does throughout this very rewarding book that ends with a mass coronation.

What does it mean to be herself in this Mexican-American culture? The last section moves more toward answering this question.

The poems are muscular with allusion and wordplay, citing sources diverse as Old English poems and Winnie-the-Pooh. The syntax is equally rich, piling adjectives that jar against elusive nouns as if to make a point: the world is complicated and so are attempts to turn experience into meaning.

It’s no secret that the world is changing radically; from massive (and righteous) civil unrest to ecological devastation that is being dismissed or ignored, we can no longer be certain that how things appear is the truth, or that anything will remain as it is or seems for any length of time.

In Prageeta Sharma’s collection of poems, her husband’s sudden death makes vivid their emotional and personal differences. Her grieving is intense and messy. Without the other to complete her understanding of the space she occupies in the world, she is ghosted. “I feel you inside but not in space” she writes in “Between Sighs.”