Review by Jennifer Martelli In the Sophocles tragedy, the character of Antigone (daughter of blinded and exiled Oedipus) was the victim of state-sponsored violence. Entombed alive after defying King Creon’s order not to bury her brother, Eteocles, she became…
Browsing: Book Reviews
Review by DeMisty D. Bellinger In Amy Barone’s latest collection of poetry, Defying Extinction, she delves into the environment, the natural world, family, grief, and growth. She affords each topic considerable care. Divided into five sections, the volume shows…
Review by Lisa C. Taylor In this eighth collection by Alison Stone, the poet moves through the history of recent years, including the pandemic, protests, racial and economic inequities and their historical context. These are poems that do not…
A History More Complete – Suzanne Frischkorn’s Fixed Star (JackLeg Press 2022) Reviewed by Sunni Brown Wilkinson How do we understand the self? Such work is both an uncovering and an inventing, a mixture of history and imagination,…
Review by Ana C.H. Silva Much to the credit of Jessica E. Johnson’s full-length poetry book, Metabolics, published by Acre Books, I couldn’t read it at all until I managed to still my frenetic end-of-year energy. Caught in the…
Review by Jamie Wendt In her new collection of poems, Crow Funeral, Kate Hanson Foster writes about the beauty and stresses of motherhood. The book begins with the title poem “Crow Funeral,” which sets a melancholy tone for the…
Review by Ellen Miller-Mack In Leaving Paradise, Gail Thomas writes about the natural world, climate change, her dog, her partner, seasons, dementia, Bethlehem Steel and being a mother, daughter and grandmother. She engages her subjects with extraordinary attention, precision,…
Review by Marjorie Tesser Little Astronaut, J. Hope Stein’s book of poetry, channels experiences, emotions, and perspectives of early motherhood. The slim, elegant hardcover features a pleasing illustration of mother and baby sketched in white on an inky background.…
Review by Michelle Panik Collaboration in any artistic medium—literary, visual, performative—can seem both intuitive and misguided. On one hand, creativity begets creativity, and so artists merging their ideas could seem natural. But on the other hand, artists pursue…
Review by Emily Webber Tara Lynn Masih’s How We Disappear is a collection of twelve stories and a novella all with a strong connection to the natural world and characters who are recreating their own worlds. Masih’s characters…