Perhaps all of the aforementioned influenced the distinct voice in Knowing, a voice that probes and wonders, laments and celebrates. Three central ideas are: The past is good, the present is better; fate coexists with human will; and time is unstoppable, art stops time.
Category: Poetry Reviews
A review of Opus: A life With Music by Pip Griffin
Griffin is a poet of philosophical refinement and linguistic delicacy, the poems in this collection are also compelling and wise, each poem a seed planted in a garden of beauty.
A review of Shocking the Dark by Robert Lowes
Scant need to explain the theme. Here we have a wistful reflection, one of the attendants of faith. The question of evil is difficult enough; here we touch upon the divine conscience. And it’s even in an almost 10-9 meter, save for the final line. Almost.
A review of Little River of Amazement by Mary Kay Rummel
Mary Kay Rummel’s universe is vast, but as “Ars Poetica” spells out, she focuses on the world around her with a keen attention to detail. The title, indeed, says it all.Little River of Amazement comes from one of the new poems, “December Bodies,” in the first of her two-part suite of new work, For the Speechless World.
A review of Therapon by Dan Beachy-Quick and Bruce Bond
Throughout this masterful book of collaborative poetry, the theme of Otherness is explored, whether through naming the nameless or gathering and disseminating the knowledge that the naming gives us.
A review of The Homesick Mortician by Peter Mladinic
There is an urgency to this breaking down of line structure, often bridged by run-on thoughts strung together by comma fasteners. It is a compelling style, one that makes the collection very readable at a quick clip. In some cases, as with the first poem, structure reasserts itself at the end with a strong strike upon the bell of reality: “They brought him home.”
A review of The Djin Hunters by Nadia Niaz
Nature makes her presence felt in many pages, particularly birds. There is a beautiful poem titled “A Time of Birds” in which we read about the hoopoe with its black-tipped orange crest bobbing against misted grass.
Poetic History-Telling with Humor and Wit: A Review of Legends of Liberty Volume II by Andrew Benson Brown
Benson Brown makes history humorous and interesting, and the retelling of the story is never dry or pedantic. At times it hardly feels like what is normally considered formal poetry—it is very story-like and moves with a brisk and expectant pace.
The Magnum Opus of a Master Poetess: A Review of What Was and Is: Formal Poetry and Free Verse by Theresa Werba
Theresa is considered one of the living masters of the sonnet (a fact which another reviewer has pointed out). I would point out, in addition, that she joins the likes of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Edna St. Vincent Millay as one of a handful of women in history to have become expert in this form.
The Embodiment of Language in Carolina Hotchandani’s The Book Eaters
Just as her father grapples with the loss of language, the author’s children are in the process of acquiring it. Both experiences raise complex questions about the self: its definition, its boundaries, and how it is shaped by the words we inherit or create.