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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
A four-in-hand is a vehicle drawn by four horses and driven by one person. The term, however, also refers to one of the simplest methods for tying a necktie. This narrow and slightly asymmetrical knot can be completed in four quick steps to transform a casual outfit into one suitable for formalities. In either case, […]
In 2020, amidst devastating wildfires and insurrections and a pandemic, we all seemed to collectively agree that we were living through the end of the world (or to quote an internet meme and the title of one of these poems, “This Is the Darkest Timeline”). But isn’t someone’s world always ending somewhere? The poems in […]
In his ecopoetic collection the luxury, Darren C. Demaree draws upon the four classical elements of water, air, fire, and earth to connect their associative power to the mutable and erratic nature of our contemporary natural world. Formally structured as a series of untitled poems comprised of three linked tercets, this collection juxtaposes human perception […]
At one point in their debut poetry book, Content Warning: Everything, New York Times best-selling author Akwaeke Emezi’s (they/them) speaker is “a ragtag doll / scraps from men or places where I left myself / even when my pieces were taken. . . .” By the end of this poem, titled “confession,” Emezi owns up […]