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 […]
November Read of the Month: “The White Bird,” by William Bernhardt
November 4, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Amy Susan Wilson Entering William Bernhardt’s debut poetry collection, The White Bird, is entering into the heart of human community. Always rich, often humorous, and at times poignant, these poems, which are diverse in style, guide us through the maze of parenting, longing, loss, working, traveling, and, among other things, falling in and […]