Not many writers could pull off such a diffuse structure but Smith does it beautifully, using her poetic vernacular and pulling the reader in so tightly, we begin to think and perceive in Smith’s fragmentary, hallucinogenic way. The result is strangely exhilarating.
Tag: poetry
A review of Chronicles in Passing by Carol Smallwood
Carol Smallwood is to be praised for her skill, perspective, and philosophy over a wide poetic range. Hers is a unique set of senses, capturing sights, sounds, moments, and observations of the everyday world in such a manner that causes the reader to see what is all around him in a fresh, new way.
A review of all these urban fields by Loisa Fenichell
Loisa Fenichell’s debut collection, all these urban fields, invites the reader to enter a river of memory, consciousness and association as her poems explore fierce and beautiful tributaries, intricate bodies of language filled with well-turned associative lines of poetry.
A review of Solid Air by David Stavinger and Anne-Marie Te Whiu (Eds)
It’s as if, by bringing in a multitude of varying voices including some multilingual, we begin to see a common humanity in the recognition that comes with such intense vulnerability, anger, self-reflection, empathy, and perhaps above all, the radical inclusion that is not only evident throughout the poems in this collection, but a powerful underlying theme.
A review of The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams: Collected Poems 1974-2018 by Mary Mackey
Serious topics such as ecofeminism, history, and ecology might sound dry, but like many magnificent thinkers before her, Mackey is in full possession of a wild and wacky sense of humor that always puts her readers at ease. I’ll also say here that while her mind is magnificent and her interests broad, her work, while stunningly layered, is always accessible.
A review of out of emptied cups by Anne Casey
out of emptied cups is a gorgeous rich collection. Despite how dark it sometimes gets as it explores the injustices of humans towards one another; men towards women; leaders towards their constituents; people towards nature and the earth; the strong against the weak, the work always leans into a shared wonder of the deep complexity of life.
A review of Patterns by Carol Smallwood
Patterns help people connect with one another because of the universal and fundamental fact that everything is interconnected because of the diversity that defines the world and its inhabitants. Carol Smallwood’s newest poetry collection, Patterns: Moments in Time, explores the sublime nature of reality that reveals how life can be truly extraordinary.
A review of Ebullience & Other Poems by Bhupender K Bhardwaj
If you are looking for a farrago of old-school romanticism, Neoplatonism, Whitmanian excess, and Hindu plenitude, you have come to the right place. There just aren’t enough descriptors in the lexicon to do justice to Bhupender Bhardwaj’s Ebullience & Other Poems.
A review White Horses by Linda Blaskey
Horses also showcases Blaskey’s eye and ear for nature poetry. The collection bounces back and forth across the country to the Ozarks to the midwest to the Delaware coast. But Blaskey is most at home in rural settings where “a combine sits idle in a half-harvested soybean field” or where “ grasshoppers stirred up from weeds leap onto your legs and arms.”
A review of Stopgap Grace by Neil McCarthy
The poems are dense, lusty in the old sense of the word—in their intentness on the uniqueness of each contemplated experience. McCarthy’s metaphors are fresh and lovely; line-by-line, the writing is often astonishingly beautiful.