An exquisite, powerful work by a young poet, Hillbilly Madonna (Driftwood Press 2022) by Sara Moore Wagner is an endlessly complex collection of poems to be relished slowly. Each poem demands special attention as the individual verses convey their own unique tales within well-wrought lines of compelling intensity. The poems, mostly written in free verse […]
“The Rat Catcher” by Rebecca Barrett
September 4, 2023 by Leave a Comment
Ruth Camden is dead in her Alabama attic. Ruth’s distinguished lineage goes all the way back to d’Iberville in old French Mobile. She died apparently with an opened scrapbook in her lap and a cup of tea near her elderly body. Detectives Hugo August and his partner Junior are called to the scene not because […]
Books of Special Note for September
September 1, 2023 by Leave a Comment
NonFiction Tent For Seven: A Camping Adventure Gone South Out West (Sandra Jonas Publishing 2023) by Marty Ohlhaut and Grace Ly manages to be humorous and horrifying and suspenseful all at once. Two brave (or foolhardy) parents take their five children on a tent-camping trip to the Canadian Rockies. The Griswold’s vacation stories are tame […]
John Wall Barger interviews poet Adrienne Su
August 16, 2023 by Leave a Comment
Raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Adrienne Su earned a BA from Radcliffe College of Harvard University and an MFA from the University of Virginia. She’s the author of the poetry collections Peach State (2021) (Finalist for 2022 Patterson Poetry Prize), Living Quarters (2015), Having None of It (2009), Sanctuary (2006), and Middle Kingdom (1997). Her poems appear in many anthologies, including five volumes of The Best American […]
“Hard Packed Clay” by Joyce Compton Brown
August 15, 2023 by Leave a Comment
Joyce Compton Brown’s new collection of poetry, Hard-Packed Clay (Red Hawk Press 2022), takes readers on a downhome kind of journey through Southern cultural territory, with poems radiant with a strong sense of place and filled with exquisite, well-wrought language. Brown—a well-respected poet with many accolades—honors both small town life and rural Southerness with poems […]
John Wall Barger
August 15, 2023 by Leave a Comment
John Wall Barger is the author of six collections of poems. His book of essays on poetics and film, The Elephant of Silence, comes out in spring 2024 with LSU Press. He is a contract editor for Frontenac House, lives in Vermont, and lectures in the Writing Program at Dartmouth College.