Review by Nancy Gerber – Reading Tsaurah Litzky’s newest collection of poems, Cleaning the Duck, is like partaking of a sumptuous feast, with words that are juicy, tender, salty, piquant. When I finished reading I was stuffed, but I wanted…
Browsing: Book Reviews
Review by Ramona McCallum The Voices Rise – Reading Virginia Bell’s From the Belly, I felt a sort of indulgent, almost guilty thrill, akin to eavesdropping on purpose to the various conversations that wrap around me in a public place,…
Review by Amy Watkins – Heterotopia, according to philosophers, is a real or imagined place of escape, transformation or reflection. If I tell you that the Heterotopia of Lesley Wheeler’s prize-winning poetry collection is Liverpool, England, the setting of her…
Review by Nancy Vona – I experienced a serious case of writer envy after reading Rosaly DeMaios Roffman’s latest book of poetry. Many of the poems evoked an exclamation of “that’s how I feel—I wish I’d written that!” Roffman has…
Review by Jennifer Jean – I love dark chocolate. The higher the percentage of bitter to sweet the better for me. No surprise then that I found myself gnashing on Nicelle Davis’ bitter-intensive poetry in Circe, her recent collection out…
Review by Wendy Babiak Not Stung – I have read a lot of bad poetry. Between having moderated a poem-sharing site and now judging a monthly online contest, I’ve read more than my share. I know bad poetry. And I…
Review by Lynne Shapiro – Once I got past my initial fear that The Archivist’s subject matter and language was too remote for my taste, I found I had misjudged the book entirely. I couldn’t put it down and read…
Review by Virginia Bell In Eve Packer’s most recent book of poems, New Nails, the speaker delights in the notion that “people are strange when you’re a stranger.” She interviews, chats up, and eavesdrops on strangers she encounters everywhere, from…
Review by Katrinka Moore – To read Holly Anderson’s The Night She Slept with a Bear is to plunge into a beautiful and harsh world, fully lived in. These interwoven poems weave chaos into a coherence that you sense rather…
Review by Moira Richards – The scent of summer clings to dampened soil; we long to turn it under, let the living nestle down beneath the leaf mulch, as we, inside our houses, turn on lamps against November, wait again…