While they can be termed as confessional, there’re no calculated calls for pity or sympathy in them, (unlike quite a few contemporary poems). Rather, most poems look at the broader socio-historic picture and compute personal reflections with a sense of objectivity where possible.
Tag: poetry
A review of In Silver Majesty by Donna Faulkner
Skeletons, dusty books and stale bodies exist seamlessly alongside a newborn swimming in safe waters, and the bending of dandelions that don’t break. All imprinted firmly in Faulkner’s words, they peel back the cover on her own aches and elations about this experience of being human.
A review of The Natural World Somersaults by Shaine Melrose
Melrose has a strong and distinct voice which stands out, with a language that is fresh, with a unique perspective. Her poems often carry multiple layers of meaning. On the surface the poems recount childhood memories and family stories, but deep reading reveals themes of identity, gender issues, sexual politics, and existential questions.
A review of Walking the Boundary by Damen O’Brien
A majority of the poems in Walking the Boundary are award winners, and if you follow these awards, as I do, the poems will be familiar. As the title suggests, these are poems about liminal spaces and edges between worlds, timeframes, states of being, genres, genders, parent and child, and between the human and any number of places, creatures, emotions, or landscapes.
Time-Traveling Poet: A Review of American Massif by Nicholas Regiacorte
At a time when the focus on identities has become so crucial, when advocacy and education on the state of the world are so vital, Regiacorte’s work is more consequential than ever. Both viscerally human and uncannily inhuman, American Massif is an illuminating and clever collection of poetry for the ages.
A review of Rural Ecologies by Michael J. Leach
Leach’s Haiku varies from three lines to two and sometimes four lines. Like all good haikus the insight and the images come from observations of the natural world. In most of this collection the haiku present an observation followed by a contrast or interpretation of the observation.
A Review of Anemone Morning and other poems by Gopal Lahiri
The book is a dreamer’s search for peace and silence in the mind’s quest for spiritual enlightenment. Lahiri explores transcendence while being compassionate and appreciative of his natural surroundings and daily responsibilities. Silence loses its blind opacity as he delves into its depths and finds a summing up of an entire life.
A review of The Under Hum by Simone Muench & Jackie K. White
The poems found within this volume are seamlessly assembled, so much so that the reader cannot detect where Muench and White’s writing both begins and ends. Their style is intermeshed one unto the other, as well as with the inclusion of other writers’ borrowed lines. The outside writers’ lines are italicized for attribution sake, but their syntax and style mirror Muench and White’s dual voices.
A review of Kyivsky Waltz: A Love Story By KS Lack
To accompany Lack on the journey of Kyivsky Waltz is to follow the arcs of two inseparable love stories, to fathom the depths of her passion for another human being and for Ukraine as it existed before the calamities of the present and as it still exists, outside time, in the mind and soul of a gifted poet.
A review of Legato Without a Lisp by Sanjeev Sethi
Legato without a Lisp is an orchestration that ties together various life notes that do not fragment our wholeness or create stoppage points between us and those we interact with. The melody created here has a rippling effect that captures and offers, without lecture or dogma, experience-earned wisdom about how to live with one another in the world at large.