Review by DeMisty D. Bellinger In A River Within Spills Light, Jane Attanucci’s debut full-length poetry collection, she melds being a mother, a grandmother, and a daughter whose mother died prematurely in both form and free verse. Attanucci is…
Browsing: Reviews
Review by Lara Lillibridge I personally love story collections in the summer—the small bits fit nicely into a busy schedule and the time away from the book allows the words to linger, as I roll them over…
Review by Lynn McGee “The End of Horses” is a book title that puts the concept of finality squarely in the reader’s view. It challenges the cognitive dissonance that enables us to go about our lives unhampered by the despair…
Mother Kingdom by Andrea Deeken, Cover and drawings by Hyde Meissner Review by Lynn McGee With Pride Month just having ended and given the Supreme Court’s latest ruling, an epigraph as ordinary as “For my wife and daughter”—found in Mother…
Review by Mindy Kronenberg A favorite course of mine back in graduate school (under the tutelage of poet Julie Sheehan) was a “First Books” examination of established contemporary poets, seeing their early literary discoveries and distinctive voices take shape…
Review by Abby Orenstein Ash Popular culture flattens the lives of disabled people beyond caricature, reducing the complexity of lived existence to a simplistic narrative that either wallows in pain and exploitation or relies on sports cliches of odds-defiance…
Review by Laura Dennis As I write, it is late June 2022. We are reminded more each day of the perils of living in a female body, of the constant scrutiny. Perhaps that is why it feels fitting that…
Review by Michelle Panik I read DeMisty D. Bellinger’s latest book, New to Liberty, while flying from San Diego with my husband and kids for a month-long stay in Costa Rica. With travel and cultural differences at the top…
Review by Glenis Redmond In We are not Wearing Helmets, Cheryl Boyce Taylor populates the poetic landscape with flowers: Hibiscus. Delphiniums. Morning glories. Petunias. Peonies. Cosmos. Hydrangeas. Moonflowers. The litany goes on and on, proving how this Trinidadian poet not only…
Review by Ellen Miller-Mack Carol Potter, a strong swimmer though language and experience, is an imaginative, far-ranging and often funny poet. What Happens Now is Anyone’s Guess is her sixth collection of poems, awarded the 2021 Pacific Coast Series…