The author of The Years of Blood talks about his new collection and its impetus, the Poetic Justice Book Prize, influences, structures, ‘Faith’ and the visceral, Yoruba culture, the catastrophe already here, the use of grammar, especially the em dash, in poetry, the impact of music on his writing, Nigeria’s vast literary tradition and upcoming books to look out for, and much more.
Author:
A review of The Years of Blood by Adedayo Agarau
Everyday African life, as depicted in Agarau’s debut poetry collection The Years of Blood, is a concrete space where “God is somewhere withering in his envelope of silence” – but how to overcome both God’s silence and the West’s speculative consideration? Infliction. In a style diagonal to Ocean Vuong’s arcane confessionalism and Charles Reznikoff’s documentarian ache, Agarau aims to inflict the griefs and hopes of life in Ibadan, during “the years of blood.”
A review of Open House: Conversations With Writers About Community edited by Kristina Marie Darling
This essay collection is of particular use to educators, with many of the essays operating from the perspective of professors in classroom settings, and thus including their strategies for engaging students in community. But there are also prescient reflections outside of the classroom or workshop, such that any reader with a passion for writing and poetry might find new perspectives and useful tools.
A review of Room on the Sea: Three Novellas by André Aciman
These overwrought overthinking characters, some dubious, some convinced at the get-go by the gentleman’s parlor tricks, are epic romantics. You might even say emotional vampires. Back and forth between alternate lives on the Amalfi coast, and in New York City (where London Terrace apartments and the High Line figure mightily), these folks dive deep into their projections and unslaked thirst for completion.
A review of A Yellowed Notebook by Beth SKMorris
While mainly a tribute to her father’s memory, Beth SKMorris’ A Yellowed Notebook also fondly (and sometimes not so fondly) recalls the rest of her family as well. Bookended by two haiku set seventy years apart, the poet lovingly reviews her father’s life and the lives he affected. The overweening picture of David Kaplan, her father, is of a confident and caring man deeply engaged in life.
A review of The Making of a Poem by Rosanna McGlone
The Making of a Poem has consistently excellent poems, worthy of emulation and worth buying for the selections alone. Being able to follow the transition from rough draft to finished poem provides fascinating insight. It’s isn’t some ineffable genius that creates such works, but hard yakka combined with a crucial sense of what does and doesn’t work which only comes with extensive reading and years of practice: the long apprenticeship that the poets featured here have clearly had.
An interview with Connie Willis
Connie Willis has won more major science fiction writing awards than any other science fiction author. More than the Big Three—Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury—more than her “hero” Heinlein, more than George R.R. Martin, more than the irascible Harlan Ellison. When I chat with her on a beautiful sunny afternoon in Greeley, Colorado, she’s matter-of-fact about her writing accomplishments, and not all that impressed with herself.
A review of Roads to Stroud by Noel Jeffs
As with previous poems I have read by Jeffs, there is a sense of quickened pace created by the lack of formal scene-setting and there is a direct apprehension of feelings and objects. The poet’s persona is established sympathetically so that the reader wishes him well and hopes that his difficulties, whether physical or metaphysical, are resolved.
A review of Amanda Chimera by Mary B. Moore
As Joseph Brodsky put it, “to the poet phonetics and semantics are, with few exceptions, identical.” And one can see this in Moore’s poems that are so marvelously, deliciously musical, locating their meanings like an orchestration rather than a thesis, a wonderous symphonic search to understand the dimensions of a dual self.
A review of The Blue House by Sky Gilbert
Consider giving The Blue House a read if you’re interested in a detailed portrait of a manic depressive artist, following the lows and lows, with stunted highs, of a life lived on odd terms with art and bad terms with society and the people who inhabit it. If you have an interest in the mid to late century gay cruising subculture, you’ll also find fodder for thought here.