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A review of Mine by Adam Ouston
There are several narrative threads and poetic refrains that twist in and out of the narrative as we move through the arc of this unnamed mind in the mine. Sometimes he is pragmatic and precise, working through his dilemma in logical steps, and sometimes he’s feverish and wild. I found the writing and the way in which it traveled through time and space, history, trauma, love and loss to be haunting and yet surprisingly compelling.
The Zingers of Adam Sedia and the Voice of Ancient Egypt: 3 books by Adam Sedia
Sedia has the unique gift of employing what I call “Zingers”— a combination or interplay or juxtaposition of words which are so unique and unusual (and unusually good) that they just pop out at you. Not only is Sedia a careful, measured poet with extremely fine and precise diction, but he manages to combine commonly-used words in uncommon ways in addition to the “Zingers”, which elevate his writing to a whole new level.
A review of The Book of the After by Rebecca Higgie
I won’t give anything away here other than to say that The Book of the After is most certainly an epic, as beautiful and grand as Otto, the 24-metre blue whale skeleton from the Boola Bardip museum in Perth who features so prominently in this story.
A review of Man Overboard by Kathleen Rooney
And perhaps most delightful, with her humor and clever word play, we could never mistake Kathleen Rooney for any other writer. Man Overboard sparkles. As Rooney’s Kick makes observations about his dilemma, we are treated to a glistening stream of consciousness as he riffs, with bitterness or resolve, on his stamina, his estranged mother, annoying brother-in-law, patient girlfriend and more.
What Clever Friends: The Selected Letters of Jane Kenyon and Alice Mattison edited by Chad Wriglesworth
Their acute understanding of friendship’s importance in life fuels the collection, fuels and energizes readers. Kenyon’s and Mattison’s direct prose addressing their love, care and concern for one another outshines social media likes and emojis, but that, of course, relies on the near-outdated notion of relationship intimacy. The letters now live, as Mattison and Wriglesworth note, in university archives, bequeathed by Kenyon’s husband, poet Donald Hall.
A review of In Common Things by Jefferson Singer
Shining gems of individual phrases adorn every page, yet the meanings of the entirety of some of the poems eluded this knucklehead reviewer … until reaching the final three pages of Notes. Consider bookmarking those Notes, to refer to them either before or immediately after reading each poem.
A review of Of a Certain Age by Tricia Gates Brown
Brown’s reverence for the natural world is another unifying theme of this collection. In “Resilience” she speaks of carrying a table out back and noticing things. She is nourished in the noticing, and we are fed by the usual images she gifts to us. She attends to the world around her great love.
A review of Reckonings by Thomas Farber
Similar to trompe l’oeil – to trick or deceive the eye: the images draw you in and consume you before you realize the demonic nature illustrated. Perhaps a slight metaphor of our present state of affairs and how we came to fine ourselves here. Not just a red state/blue state problem: we all share the blame and that is why it is imperative to determine how it all went so wrong.
Magickal Millenials: A review of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn by Felix John Taylor
Felix John Taylor achieves a grand academic sweep of the field. His Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn: Magic Arts and the Occult Revival is a work of prodigious scholarship, tracing in minute detail the origins, the rivalries, the infighting inherent to magickal team building.
A review of Dreamboat by Jeffrey Skinner
We enter the collection meeting the speaker as he experiences a bout of insomnia during a river cruise in Germany. The Rhine River transforms into a pack of stampeding dogs of various breeds. Logic does not rule—the poems are untethered, capable of moving anywhere at any moment.