the correct fury of your why is a mountain Kevin Andrew HeslopGordon Hill Press, 2021 Review by Robert Colman The intriguing aspect of reading a poet’s debut is witnessing a voice perhaps not yet fully formed but exploring themes and...
Dear Memory: Letters On Writing, Silence, And GriefVictoria ChangMilkweed Editions, 2021 Review by Cynthia Sharp Victoria Chang’s multimedia poetic conversation Dear Memory: Letters On Writing, Silence, And Grief turns sorrow into art with transcendent understanding. Intergenerational suffering is expressed...
PhototaxisOlivia TapieroTranslated by Kit SchluterNightboat Books, 2021 Review by Marisa Grizenko Olivia Tapiero’s Phototaxis, translated from French by Kit Schluter, opens in a world we can recognize. The incomprehensible has happened, and happened again, yet people continue living their...
CustomsSolmaz SharifGraywolf Press, 2022 Review by ALHS Solmaz Sharif’s Customs opens with an eruption in the face of the violence of conditionality: “I had to.” This first poem is titled “America.” Customs is poetry about conditionality in that it...
Interview by Diane Gottlieb “If You Think the Way to Learn,” the first poem in Ana Maria Spagna’s Mile Marker Six, takes us right to the heart of this collection: it moves from Spagna’s past to her present, from...
Blue-Skinned GodsS.J. SinduSoho Press, 2021 Review by Marcie McCauley In Blue-Skinned Gods, S.J. Sindu presents a narrative designed to challenge readers’ understanding of truth and trust, belonging and belief. “I had hoped for a story,” Kalki muses, but “instead...
AutowarAssiyah Jamilla TouréBrick Books, 2021 Review by Catherine Harris Assiyah Jamilla Touré’s debut collection is both concrete and abstract, dissolving and rematerializing into new forms at every turn. The speaker in Touré’s collection is repeatedly reborn, shedding their previous...
The RenunciationsDonika Kelly Graywolf Press, 2021 Review by Stella Cali Donika Kelly’s second collection of poetry, The Renunciations, begins with fire as a transitional force that overwrites the physical landscape of the speaker’s body. Standing in a field, “the undergrowth...
Made-Up: A True Story of Beauty Culture Under Late Capitalism Daphné B. Translated by Alex ManleyCoach House Books, 2021 Review by Alanna Why When you think of make-up, do you think of a frivolous activity or a form of self-care? For...