The Pearl Diver’s Daughter (Cloud Mountain Press 2023) by Michael David Blanchard is a collection of gently intellectual and lyrical poems which often question the place in the world for both poetry and for a poet. Filled with evocative sensory details, radiant natural images, and a frequent sense of curiosity and wonder, the poems are […]
“how small, confronting morning” by Lola Haskins
October 19, 2022 by Leave a Comment
Poet Lola Haskins’s enthusiasm for her adopted state of Florida is expressed with grace, power, and beauty in how small, confronting morning (Jacar Press 2016; released as ebook 2021), a collection of thirty-five poems. The words and images captured in the book quietly yet passionately evoke a wild and natural Florida that is being lost […]
“Alone in the House of My Heart” by Kari Gunter-Seymour
October 5, 2022 by Leave a Comment
Alone in the House of My Heart (Ohio University Swallow Press, 2022) is a rich and varied collection of poems by Kari Gunter-Seymour, Ohio Poet Laureate and founder/executive director of the “Women of Appalachia Project,” an arts organization she created to address discrimination directed at women from the Appalachian region. Divided in to five sections, […]
December Read of the Month: “Like Headlines,” by Nancy Dillingham
December 6, 2018 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Fred Chappell Ezra Pound, that cranky ringmaster of twentieth century American poetry, offered this definition: “Poetry is news that stays news.” His point, that strong poetry is always important, fresh, and urgent, would be soberly received by many an earnest striver in the art, even those who had never heard of Pound. Some […]
August Read of the Month: “Punch,” by Ray McManus
August 3, 2016 by 2 Comments
Reviewed by William Bernhardt I should have seen it coming. The book opens with an epigraph from Philip Levine that provides fair warning: “You’ve never done something simple, so obvious…because you don’t know what work is.” That quote is a clear indicator of the informative and enlightening pleasures to be found in Ray McManus’s fascinating […]
“The Walmart Republic,” by Quraysh Ali Lansana and Christopher H. Stewart
December 18, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by MW Rishell Intertwined strands of DNA have become a popular metaphor, one that comes to mind while reading The Walmart Republic, a co-authored collection of poetry by Quraysh Ali Lansana and Christopher H. Stewart. The poems are gathered into five sections, with the first featuring the work of Stewart and the second the […]