Tracy K. Smith had already been awarded a Pulitzer Prize and appointed to a second term as Poet Laureate of the United States when she did a reading at my local library (Arlington, Va.) Although I had read her warm and inviting poetry, I was not prepared for the way she pulled me into a […]
“To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul” by Tracy K. Smith
Dreama Frisk
Dreama Frisk, born and raised on McCann’s Run, WV, won first place in the Northern Virginia Writers poetry contest (2021). She also convened Ice Writers in Romney, WV. Her poetry collection, Ivory Hollyhock is on reserve in Arlington, VA Library Writers Center, cited as “a slice of history and its importance to the understanding of Appalachian […]
“Valediction: Poems and Prose” by Linda Parsons
Valediction: Poems and Prose (Madville Publishing 2023) by Linda Parsons is an achingly lovely collection in which the poet treks through ordinary facets of life weighing marvel against damage. Parsons’ poems and her micro-essays, which she calls visitations, are eminently relatable—the death of a beloved dog, a complicated father-daughter relationship, loving support from older women […]
“Idiot Men” by Scott Gould
Scott Gould’s newest collection, Idiot Men, provides the stage for wayward characters who make poor choices in life and love against a backdrop of elegant prose. In “Word of the Day” (winner of the 2020 Larry Brown Short Story Award), a long-haul truck driver’s wife flees to Jamaica with her lover, leaving him to babysit her hairless tomcat, […]
March Read of the Month: “A Glooming Peace This Morning” by Allen Mendenhall
Allen Mendenhall’s debut novel, A Glooming Peace This Morning (Livingston Press 2023), is an achingly lovely, stirring novel about confused youth, a tragically mismatched relationship, legal ethics, and small-town Deep South in the 1970s. The story is told in the voice of a mature man looking back forty years to events in his youth, and […]