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...
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...
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...
Odes and LamentsFiona Tinwei LamCaitlin Press, 2019 Review by Cynthia Sharp Odes and Laments is one of three of Fiona Tinwei Lam’s exquisite poetry collections. The cover of Odes and Laments, designed by Vici Johnstone with photography by Janet...
Postscripts from a City BurningSam CheukPalimpsest Press, 2021 Review by Robert Colman Hong Kong has stood as a kind of anomaly for many years: as a city colony of a nation (UK) well past its years of empire, and...
The Drowning HouseJohn Sibley WilliamsElixir Press, 2021 Review by Erica Goss “I dwell in possibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote—but to survive our daily lives, too often we replace possibility with dullness. Both familiar and comforting, routine implies a necessary amount...
The Curious ThingSandra LimW. W. Norton & Company, 2021 Review by Clara Otto The Curious Thing by Sandra Lim explores dreams, writing, and the banality of life. The poems in this collection feel as though the speaker is trying...