MER Bookshelf – April 2025 Curated by Melissa Joplin Highley Alice B Fogel, Falsework, Bee Monk Press, August 2024, poetry These poems refuse sleep. They remind us that life is a cycle of filling and emptying, of finding…
Browsing: Reviews
Review by Sharon Tracey In Mycocosmic, Lesley Wheeler’s sixth poetry collection, the poet uses the metaphor of fungi to thread a masterful spell of poems that shimmer with dark energy, electricity, and transmutations as she explores childhood, family history,…
Review by Rebecca Jane Planetaria re-charts the stars with the poetics of science. Monica Ong, a designer and experimental author, has invented a new genre that spins the literary, visual, and scientific arts to “map us from want to that…
Review by Rebecca Jane Some Dark Familiar holds nothing back, but charges, full force, into the reader’s interior with hard truths about how reality behaves when a woman chooses to be a new, single mother. Poignant images take aim…
Review by Emily Webber Lee Upton is a prolific writer with short story collections, poetry books, novels, and even a libretto among her published works. Now with her latest work, Wrongful, she adds a literary mystery to the list. The…
MER Bookshelf – March 2025 Curated by Melissa Joplin Higley Lynn McGee, Science Says Yes, Broadstone Books, January 2025, poetry Science Says Yes by Lynn McGee addresses human empathy and resilience in relation to nature, advances in technology…
Review by Nicelle Davis Beyond Survival: Nadia Alexis’s Testament to Love, Memory, and Reclamation Beyond the Watershed by Nadia Alexis is not just a collection of poetry and photography—it is a haunting echo of lineage, an unflinching dialogue between…
Review by Meghan Miraglia “[W]hat comes after the last word”: A review of Hortensia, in winter The first line of Megan Merchant’s Hortensia, in winter is a damn good one: “I want to ask the hard questions, but…
Review by DeMisty D. Bellinger In her latest chapbook, Gala, Lynne Shapiro melds persona and ekphrasis in an extended look at David Salle’s work and woman as artistic subject, especially in the painting “The Black Bra.” The poems offer…
Review by Rachel Lutwick-Deaner Flu Season is Katie Kalisz’s second poetry collection, following Quiet Woman (2019) and those readers who appreciate her previous attention to the stillness and sweetness of life will not be disappointed. Flu Season examines the…