Claire Potter’s Acanthus both draws on mythology and subsumes the intimate and personal into its broader terrain. Potter’s work is consistently compelling, utilising the reservoir of cultural knowledge abundant in mythological stories and heroes.
Category: Poetry Reviews
On the Spirituality of Keisha-Gaye Anderson’s A Spell For Living
Spirituality is at the core of Anderson’s work. In it, she talks about God, the self, and the universe in one breath. These, and more, are attributes that shine light on spirituality but do not define it in totality. Anderson’s poetry leads to this point, that of knowing yet not knowing while searching for meaning.
A review of Resistance Is a Blue Spanish Guitar by George Wallace
Wallace’s voice is compelling and instructive. Parenthetical asides abound, as if he is telling us, in an aside, crucial information to elucidate and amplify his lessons. He can also be funny. “The Real Dookie” is a whimsical poem about the rise and fall of a Beat Poet (“the real dookie”). “Goodbye Angelina” is in the aw-shucks voice of a Texas cowpoke who has been sleeping with the wife of an absent husband.
A review of The Necessity of Wildfire by Caitlin Scarano
It is from gifts of intellectual and creative awareness that a poet can make subtle assertions, even if the gifts have been painfully wrought. Poems in this collection examine emotions of anger, grief, rage, shame and regret, often within careful nature-based metaphors. The poems are rich in description of place and nature that are nonjudgmental and move the collection forward.
A review of Masquerade by Carolyne Wright
The writing in Masquerade is erudite, with frequent literary allusions that enrich the poems. From the moment young Wright meets the handsome neighbor to her writing studio, the pheromones are on high alert. In “At First Sight,” she writes of “Kismet’s / metabolic blow-dart” but signals premonition with the final question, “Cupid’s curse / or Caliban’s
A review of Scale Model of a Country at Dawn by John Sibley Williams.
Scale Model of a Country at Dawn is an incantation of fluctuating tides and currents, it is an alchemy of stars, horses, ghosts, salt, dreams, and especially prayers. It is an ebb and flow of beautiful lyric poems that carry us over the shifting ground upon which we build our lives, sustaining by its music, but never pretending to a security that no one can promise.
A review of The Alphabet of Women edited by Miriam Hechtman
The richness and variety of topics and styles is impressive. Many of the stories in the poems tell us about the strength of women and their struggle to survive in a male dominated world. Reading page by page we go through women’s lives, from the quotidian to the extraordinary, from the intimate to the distant, from the general to the particular.
A review of American Daguerreotypes: Ekphrastic Poems by James Penha
The poems are uniformly crisp, accessible, and well-written, and tuned to each illustration. All in all, a fascinating and well-done presentation of graphic, history, and poetry in a lovely and unique format. From the intriguing concept to the full-realized poems, this chapbook is a delight to view and read.
A review of chalk borders by Sarah St Vincent Welch
St Vincent Welch’s poetry is characterised by originality, sincerity and engagement. Some of the poems have nostalgic overtones, while others leave room for complex reader interpretation and simultaneous meanings.
A review of Letters from the Periphery by Alex Skovron
Often the poems have a dream-like quality, the familiar taking on a surreal, Twin Peaks like inversion as it creates these strange portraits, as in “Apokryphon” – “A leering urchin passes, walking with a broom. Curtains/part, discreet.” Skovron’s detail is painterly—the drape of clothing, the angle of the head, light falling in such a way that there is almost a magical aspect to the characters. They are slightly outside of the scene, being watched while watching.