Where the Lost Things Go is a powerful book. The immediate accessibility of the poetry does not diminish the impact of the work, which moves through key moments in life, tracking grief, loss, ageing, parenting, and what it means to take a stance in a world where the need for compassion as a political gesture–deep-seated humanism–is greater than it has ever been.
Tag: poetry
A review of In The Tree We Planted and Buried You In by Billie R Tadros
The title emphasizes the orthogonal relationship between the ever-presence of a loved one in presence and in absence. Almost as if love itself is a kind of eu-trauma. A poetics that attempts to grasp the complexity of loving as, with, and through trauma.
A review of Naming the Silence by Michael David Blanchard
Blanchard consistently displays an ease with poems in both short and long form and reveals a practiced command of nuanced phrasing, versification, and evocative imagery. While the works might be somewhat more formal in style than those of many of his contemporaries, there is no dominant or predetermined verse form here.
A review of The Northway by Lisa Bellamy
With its keen eye and impeccable phrasing, Lisa Bellamy’s The Northway gives us good-natured laughter, the kind of feeling you get from a Masterpiece Theater series…and it is ever so much more respectable and rewarding than a binge-watch.
A review of and my heart crumples like a coke can by Ali Whitelock
The poetry manages to be both pithy and almost hysterically funny, not an easy mix to achieve, but that is how life works: the paradox of what we carry and what we experience in each moment. Whitlock captures this duality perfectly, taking a stand-up comedian’s incision to pretension and human foibles.
A review of In the Measuring by Carol Smallwood
The aforementioned exuberance comes with the author’s novel treatment of the everyday—those ordinary, mundane tasks and chores we take for granted. Who would think to write a pantoum about dishwashing liquid? Yet Smallwood carries it off, and braids colloquial language with scientific. She assumes a persona the reader can identify with.
A review of The Patron Saint of Cauliflower by Elizabeth Cohen
Some secrets when told are betrayals, or suicides, blood spilled or spells cast, for magic and saints governing and protecting, are also secret languages, the ancient rites of certain religions also called “mysteries.” And, so it is in this well-balanced and short collection, an excursion into mysteries, methods of preserving and enduring.
A review of Go because I Love you by Jared Harél
We may not often be able to control the trajectory of our choices, but we do have the option to recognize them responsibly and honestly. Harél shows us we have an obligation to not glaze over those choices with false distortions that appease our fragile egos and illusions and compromise truth and reality. He examines places where our expectations and confidence become derailed.
A review of The Last Jazz Fan And Other Poems by Kenneth Salzmann
Kenneth Salzmann may be a musical guy enthralled with jazz, but in this instance music is really a metaphor for poetry. He is a poet. I’m a fan of poetry like his. It’s as simple as that—and as messy. You see, his poetry really does creep into the bones, the marrow, the blood.
A review of Soap By Charlotte Guest
These are poems that pivot on a moment: a chance meeting, a sudden change in situation, or a close observation that takes something commonplace such as an afternoon on the back verandah watching fireworks, driving a vehicle, or reading the news and moves in so close it becomes abstract: a synecdoche for something else. In a way that’s Proustian, the imagery gives rise to a memory, or a perception which is emotive and powerful, revealing something subtle about the world.