Despite being a collection of poems, the book doesn’t sound monotonous and is full of various themes and styles, which Brown has complemented with quotes and images in several instances. These intertextual elements did not just come off as random ways to break from the poems but relevantly complemented the book’s overall theme.
Tag: poetry
Poetry in Misalignment: A review of locust blindfold stompchant rain by Neil Flory
Here, understanding the compositions through perception is recommended. It is nearly cinematic and tied to specific moments that are constantly unsettled and incapable of solidifying harmoniously. In one lens, the image of the metaphysical poet appears. In another, the weathered-down court jester.
A review of Egrets, While War by Tishani Doshi
In the title poem of her new collection, Tishani Doshi juxtaposes violence with timeless endurance, patient resolution with destruction, almost like a manifestation of Shiva, the creator/destroyer god of Hinduism. She writes about the ongoing “dirge of loss recovery / loss loss loss,” but assures us that “Our task is to march on.”
A review of Mirage of Burning Things by Ryan Di Francesco
If you’re looking for poetry that explores the dystopia we’ve woken up in, poems that remind us we’re all animals even when we write and dream, Mirage of Burning Things will be affirming, even as it releases you as disturbed as when you arrived. Parlyaree Press is winking, knowing we’re all on the platform, but the trains have stopped running.
A review of Neolithic Imaginings by Loralee Clark
This is a vast and ambitious collection which is totally imaginative and unlike anything I have read. After reading Neolithic Imaginings, I look at the night sky wondering about my place in that sky and my connection to those who stood full of hope among the stones, dwarfed by their immeasurable mystery and beauty.
A review of Good Girl by Holly Coleman
This is a chapbook to read aloud, to read to a lover, or to read alone as an act of self-pleasure. In her essay(s), Coleman strives for clarity as she navigates the strict rules of syntax she must master in order to go free—she is a woman expected to say certain tame things who instead writes the forbidden correctly.
A review of Days & Chances by Joanna Klink
Klink’s writing is carefully measured, with a cadence that pulls the reader forward persistently. Strong emotions contain just enough curiosity to ground the flow. Her line breaks feel so natural, it’s tempting to forget they once had to be carefully determined. This morning, the sun still rose, but it will set tonight with more poignancy. The rain, like the stages of grief, pounds, weeps, self-sooths, and endures.
A review of Women: 20 Japanese Female Poets / 20 Waka Poems edited by Naoko Fujimoto
Juicy might seem an odd word to apply to a sophisticated layering of multiple renderings and contextual frameworks of ancient waka poetry. But through Fujimoto’s arresting haibun paragraphs, interpretive and spacious translations, and visual/graphic pieces that stand on their own right, these 20 women poets, and the eras they lived in, come to life in vivid, haunting detail.
A review of Brood Chamber by Annie Mairéad Hunter
One of the most powerful poems in this collection is “Whale Fall”, a poem that follows the descent of a whale as it falls to the ocean floor. As with most of the poems in this book this one works on multiple levels: literal, ecological, metaphoric, and emotional, exploring what humanity has done to the whales, created a “universe of useless things” with its hunted bodies.
A “Full-Feathered Companionship”: On Marjorie Maddox’s Hover Here
In her newest poetry collection, Hover Here, Marjorie Maddox rejects the harried pace of modern life while never losing track of the urgency to move closer to what matters. What matters is relationship, and these poems invite us, even beseech us, to deepen our companionship with nature, ourselves, and each other. To do so means experiencing love alongside sorrow, remembering in order to forget, and embracing the shadows while noticing the flowers.