Striding through the woods one autumn afternoon, with oak nuts falling, a red hawk sailing overhead, and a breeze cooling his reddened cheeks, the poet notes that, “all is living and all is dead.” It’s an observation that reflects, and in some way defines, the content of this collection by radiation oncologist Matthew Mumber. Confronting […]
Swansdown is dedicated to the poet’s brother, Michael Platt, who died in 2018. The collection begins with his brother’s death in “Sleep.” From there Platt expands through the world while retaining an anchor to his brother and his family, and then turns, inevitably, to his own anticipated end. Platt’s gift is his ability to connect […]
In Blood Snow (Wave Books, 2022), dg nanouk okpik’s visionary pastorals mourn the melt, illness, and loss occasioned by the Anthropocene, while at the same time thrumming with mystical insight and heart-stopping beauty. okpik uses the split pronoun “she/I” to expand and complicate individual subjecthood. In her first book, Corpse Whale (The University of Arizona […]
Whenever I read a book of poems coming out of New York City, I am always left wondering whether I’m reading poems and listening for the city, or whether I’m looking at the poet gesture like they’re a New Yorker. And I wonder if this is what passes for New York School-ish style these days. […]
In Kien Lam’s slim but fruitful poetry collection Extinction Theory, readers discover intimate rationales regarding some of life’s most silent, mind-boggling mysteries. The speaker questions God’s residence, appearance, and existence. Simultaneously, the speaker also documents the Asian-American experience—rife with linguistic and cultural differences, as well as increasing racism amidst America’s ever-shifting sociopolitical landscape. The poems […]
How does language—with its rich histories, tonal registers, and lexicon—shape our understanding of ourselves and our place in the world? This question is central to John Latta’s new poetry collection, Some Alphabets, which deftly explores the relationships between meaning and the limits of language. The book is divided into five sections: Sections I, II, and […]
Few collections of poetry are as inventive, thoughtful, and playful as Katrina Roberts’s gorgeous sixth collection, LIKENESS. This hybrid book pairs seemingly whimsical, colored drawings with single lines in all capital letters beneath them that are not captions, but more like riddles that often refer to other artists and writers. Utilizing the hybrid form, facing […]
“One is startled—by a color, into being,” writes anthologist and translator Wong May as she considers a poem by the Tang Dynasty poet Wang Wei. Nothing happens in the poem, except that the color of moss amazes the poet on a dreary day. Yet, that color becomes a doorway to sudden presence. In her comprehensive […]
Brenda Hillman has thrilled me in her ten earlier books, among them her quartet on the elements, a Lucretian-achievement that gives us earth, air, water, and fire as foreground for human conditions. Hillman’s 2018 Extra Hidden Light, Among the Days, studies lichen, moss, and otherwise unattended fungi, to focus upon the days of an in-between […]
Near the beginning of her new book of poetry, Solmaz Sharif employs a startling visual metaphor to define her poetics. The poem is entitled “Visa” (“From past participle of videre or to see”): As we wait for her to exit customs, our sightline is obstructed by opaque sliding doors, the twisting hallway behind it, the […]