MER Bookshelf – January 2025 Curated by Melissa Joplin Higley Dzvinia Orlowsky, Those Absences Now Closest, Carnegie Mellon University Press, October 2024, poetry. In her newest collection, Ukrainian American poet Dzvinia Orlowsky is a witness, never a bystander, ready…
Browsing: Reviews
Review by Joellen Craft Too Much to Ask: Bridget Bell and the Toxic Positivity of American Motherhood In the midst of a great era for “mommy poetry,” Bell’s debut, All That We Ask of You Is to Always…
Review by Rebecca Jane With Praying to the God of Small Things, Wisconsin-based poet, Catherine Jagoe pays homage to Earth’s aliveness, within its microcosmic realms—here, insects reveal their ingenuity, and laced wings beguile the witness. These poems urge us…
Review by Laurie Kuntz “Put back together by poetry…” is a poignant line from the About the Author paragraph, which is on the last page of Susan’s Vespoli’s book: One of Them Was Mine. This powerful book is a…
MER Bookshelf – December 2024 Curated by Melissa Joplin Higley Megan Merchant & Luke Johnson, A Slow Indwelling, Harbor Editions, November 2024, poetry. This unique collaborative work explores parenthood, illness, and the beauty found in life’s fragile moments through…
Review by Sharon Tracey From the Latin ministerium comes the word ministry: the service and work of providing assistance and care. And in her engaging new collection, Wonderwork, poet and Unitarian Universalist minister Sandra Fees invites us to bear…
Review by Jeannine Hall Gailey A Passionate Plea for a Dying Planet: Martha Silano’s This One We Call Ours In Martha Silano’s sixth book, the Blue Lynx-prize winning This One We Call Ours from Lynx House Press, the call…
Review by Katie Kalisz Natalie Solmer’s debut collection Water Castle takes as its muses water, grandmothers, and ancestry. It has three sections, “Snowbelt Wind”, “Motherland”, and “Map in My Palm”, 38 poems in total. Each section begins with a…
Review by Nicelle Davis The Odyssey Reimagined: A Review of Odysseus’ Daughter by Cammy Thomas Odysseus’ Daughter by Cammy Thomas offers a fresh and intimate retelling of The Odyssey, presenting the legendary tale through first-person narratives that breathe new…
Review by Amanda K. Jaros As a mother, backpacker, and nature lover, I’ll pick up any book on these themes. It’s rare to find a book that covers all three. So, I was delighted to read Andrea Lani’s Uphill…