Every once in a great while, a reader encounters a collection of poetry that leaves a pleasantly gritty residue in the mind. Such is the case with William Woolfitt’s The Night the Rain Had Nowhere to Go (Belle Point Press 2024). In sixty pages, hard labor, stark poverty, tragic history, and environmental dystopia blend with […]
Blackened Beauty: A Review of William Woolfitt’s “The Night the Rain Had Nowhere to Go”
October 9, 2024 by Leave a Comment
“If Lost” by Clint Bowman
September 25, 2024 by Leave a Comment
To quote the opening lines of a Mary Chapin Carpenter song, “To be alive is to know your purpose / It’s your place in the world.” While “A Place in the World” does not rate inclusion on the playlist of songs to listen to while reading Clint Bowman’s new book, If Lost (Loblolly Press 2024), […]
“Birdhouse Jesus” by Terri Chastain
September 24, 2024 by 1 Comment
Birdhouse Jesus (Twisted Road Publication 2023) by Terri Chastain is a powerful novel. Like many powerful books, it has some heart-clutching, harrowing scenes, but, on balance it is uplifting. Yet, given some elements of the plot, perhaps there should be a trigger warning that the story contains a few scenes of sexual abuse of a […]
“The Pearl Diver’s Daughter” by Michael Blanchard
September 10, 2024 by Leave a Comment
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, […]