Review by Lisa C. Taylor What initially struck me about Rise Wildly by Tina Kelley was the imaginative titles of her poems. Titling poems is an art form, and Tina Kelley does it well. Who wouldn’t want to read a…
Browsing: Book Reviews
Review by Barbara Ellen Sorensen In Shakira Croce’s debut poetry chapbook, Leave It Raw, there is an awareness of the inevitable cyclical journey of life. Though the poems are organized in a linear manner, unfolding from youth to motherhood, there…
Review by Lara Lillibridge Forget Russia is a novel told in two perspectives, that of Anna, a twenty-two-year-old American student, and her grandmother, Sarah, who is living in Russia right before the Russian revolution. Anna’s story is told in…
Review by Sherre Vernon Jen Stewart Fueston is the author of two chapbooks, Latch (2019) and Visitations (2015), and of the full-length collection considered here: Madonna, Complex (2020). Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the…
Review by Mindy Kronenberg In Where The Eye Wants Coast, her eighth collection of poetry, Linda Opyr presents poems that are quietly but powerfully wrought, a collection of transformative moments summoned by life’s seasonal gifts and losses. Published as…
Review by Lisa C. Taylor Lori Desrosiers’ third full-length poetry collection, Keeping Planes in the Air builds a narrative about the ways in which family history plays out in the most mundane of moments. The poet grapples with power…
Review by Carla Panciera Veronica Montes’s The Conquered Sits at the Bus Stop, Waiting, winner of Black Lawrence Press’s Spring 2019 Black River Chapbook Competition, includes eight pieces of flash fiction. Her first collection, Benedita Takes Wings and Other…
Review by Lisa C. Taylor A Place Remote by Gwen Goodkin is a debut short story collection populated by unique characters that embody small town America. Life’s tragedies are on display in these stories, as random acts determine the…
Review by Janet McCann As a crone poet whose childbearing years are decades past and mostly forgotten, I found this collection brought everything back graphically. The physical and metaphysical elements of childbirth became real again—hyper-real. The poems evoke strong…
Review by Nadia Wynter In Mama Phife Represents, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, an island woman from Trinidad, a mother, wife, friend, poet, an artist, gives the world a peek inside her grieving heart after the death of her beloved son, Malik…