Reviews
Emilia Phillips raves about Gaylord Brewer's Give Over, Graymalkin!
In the Connecticut River Review, Emilia Phillips says that "Brewer's intentions in Give Over, Graymalkin waver between reverence and ravaging, and the tension between the two creates an energy that pushes the boundaries of the poems' uncomplicated but tight forms, and enswarms the reader, bewildering him or her to give over and to follow Brewer wherever he may go."
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Patrick Bizzaro Reviews Gaylord Brewer's Give Over, Graymalkin in Asheville Poetry Review
In the Asheville Poetry Review, Patrick Bizzaro had this to say about Gaylord Brewer's Give Over, Graymalkin- "As poetry, Brewer's work avoids sentimentality and instead reveals the inner workings of a mind in pain. There poems give us the sense that they are personal, the author and narrator nearly identical in time and place."
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The Midwest Book Review praises Genevieve Kaplan's In the ice house!
Recently, James A. Cox of The Midwest Book Review had this to say about Genevieve Kaplan – "In the ice house is a core addition to any modern poetry collection."
To see the full review, click here.
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The Oregonian on Brian Doyles Bin Laden's Bald Spot
D.K. Row notes that “‘Bin Laden’s Bald Spot,’ illustrates how avidly Doyle likes to experiment with narrative structure; draw tersely spoken characters; riff using folksy humor but also with 19th-century American poetic rhapsody.”
—The Oregonian
To see the full review please click here
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Robert Sward's 'New and Selected Poems: 1957-2011' is on The Midwest Book Review Poetry Shelf!
The editor's at The Midwest Book Review had this to say about Robert Sward's poetry collection:
“‘New and Selected Poems: 1957-2011’ is a collection of poetry from Robert Sward, looking to grant unique viewpoints on the world and the challenges we so often face and struggle to understand. ‘New and Selected Poems: 1957-2011’ combines comedy and poignancy in a fine blend.”
—The Midwest Book Review
For the full review, please link here
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Smartish Pace says Gaylord Brewer is a "deeply personal poet"
Smartish Pace gives deep insight into Gaylord Brewer and his collection, Give Over, Graymalkin:
“Brewer is a deeply personal poet, and in many ways is his own best subject. He speaks frankly and directly to the reader, inviting us into his solitude with a voice that is warm, curious and intelligent.”
—Smartish Pace
For the full review, please click here
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Gaylord Brewer's Give Over, Graymalkin is a Notre Dame Review Editors Select!
The editors of Notre Dame Review acknowledge:
Contributor Gaylord Brewers new book [consists] mainly [of] poems written far away from his home in Tennesseein India during a residency at the Global Arts Village, in France, and at the Can Serrat and Fundación Valpariso in Spain.
—Notre Dame Review
To see the full review, please click here
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Sugar House Review's thoughtful take on Gaylord Brewer's Give Over, Graymalkin
Robin Linn for Sugar House Review had this to say about Give Over, Graymalkin:
Brewers collection engages with adventuresome verse that is lyrical, rhythmic and lush with allusion.
Sugar House Review
For full review please click here
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Notre Dame Magazine chooses Brian Doyle's Bin Laden's Bald Spot as a "Cafe Choice Book"!
Notre Dame Magazine spotlights Bin Laden's Bald Spot, saying:
In [Brian Doyles] collection of 25 stories, readers will meet a barber who shaves the heads of thugs in Bin Ladens cave; Joseph Kennedy talking to a bartender just before a stroke silences him forever; a man who unearths a living baby boy in his garden; and a teenage boy who hightails it out of town with a surprising cargo in the trunk of his car.
Notre Dame Magazine
To see full review, please click here
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Poetry Salzburg Review Gives Ally Acker's Some Help from the Dead an excellent review.
In the Autumn 2011 edition, Poetry Salzburg Review said:
"Ally Ackers Some Help from the Dead offers high-spirited, lively encounters with life and language as well as frequent commemorations of the dead. Yet she is engaged, passionately, in present life as well: her family, the women she loves, a whole range of individual humans made shiningly particular in finely worked lines
Poetry Salzburg Review
Please see below to read the full review.
Ally Ackers Some Help from the Dead offers high-spirited, lively encounters with life and language as well as frequent commemorations of the dead. Yet she is engaged, passionately, in present life as well: her family, the women she loves, a whole range of individual humans made shiningly particular in finely worked lines, such as the energetic opening of Maybe, Sal (p. 19):
Ive just arrived. Put down my bags. Sally passes
in the hall on her way to somewhere.
Leaps on tiptoes, INHALE HER TO ME, I miss you, I say
You dont, she says. That indomitable British. You miss
talking to me.
A high-tension eroticism, often ebullient and melancholy at once, pervades many of these poems. In Still Life With [sic!] Manageable Object (p. 31) the object is a lover whose borderline personality doesnt sound so bad but means that she constantly needs someone in the bed, someone you can predict / and control, someone just a little / worse off in their head. In the extravagant, funny The Laundromat: (p. 39) (first published in PSR), the poets dreamy fantasy takes her from the everyday moment to Mozambique or China in pursuit of a pretty woman, though soon she is struck with all these peasants / who want you to feed them.
Several poems in Some Help from the Dead remember Ackers lost father, and the third section (Insomnia) takes a somber turn, remembering her losses and searching for a way forward. The apparent autobiography of these poems is moving, even when roiled by an occasional mixed metaphor like the one in the last line here:
I had just been abandoned by the woman I loved.
Shed left me for someone so utterly unremarkable, it
was as
Though shed said,
Anyone would be better than you.
Punch in the gut that echoed for decades. (p. 71)
The confessional passages of the book are complemented well by experiments with form: too fine ghazals bend the form but respect its associative links among stanzas and avoidance of linear narrative. A series of ekphrastic poems respond inventively to surreal, black and white artwork by Remedios Varo, often invoking feminist themes:
This is woman working alone
On a craft of her own design[. sic!]
Men never interested her.
But birds? Ah, birds were quite another matter.(p.115)
In the final section, Respite, animals often turn up as figures that offer consolation and connection to the larger world, as they do in the dreamy Menagerie (p. 120), which begins One morning you awaken too early and the animals are there sleeping peacefully / all around you and ends with a lovely, tender moment of reconciliation (even if imaginary): Suddenly there is a giraffe weeping like a flower in the moon. / You gather the giraffe like a bouquet of your own neglect. And you rock it. / You rock it. Another fine poem that works toward hard-won accommodation with loss and the grief is the haunting Dark Birds of the Body (p. 128). The birds, dark or not, offer at least a partial solace: Each sang me her song of grief / and I fell in love all over / Just letting the world be.
Poetry Salzburg Review
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Publishers Weekly says "Ron Carlson Delivers the Whimsy"
In a recent Publishers Weekly article, Wendy Werris profiles author Ron Carlson for their January 20th edition. Werris acknowledges that "after 10 books of fiction in 35 years [Carlson] will soon make his debut as a poet whose reach successfully acheives a range of voice, tone, and playful distinction."
To see the article in its entirety please link here (Subscribers only).
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Southern Indiana Review gives great review for Covet by Lynnell Edwards
Southern Indian Review reviews Covet by Lynnell Edwards. Here is a small excerpt from the article:
“…In Covet, femininity becomes a masterful force and fragility a pointed threat… Edwards uses a beautiful and fragile central image throughout the poems: hard edges moving under, stabbing against, and sometimes puncturing a delicate membrane…She builds on old themes of fragility and maternal care to create an image not just loving and delicate but also grotesque and painful…”
—Southern Indiana Review
Read the entire review at Southern Indian Review.
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Covet by Lynnell Edwards reviewed by Book Punch
Covet by Lynnell Edwards is reviewed by Book Punch in 200 words or less.
“Covet is a verb. It’s active. Here, in these poems, it’s also a constant choice. And then, you realize that most emotions—most reactions—are choices. Choose to be angry, or don’t. Choose to be content, or don’t. All of these decisions—all of this action—surrounds us, circling, like wild animals. But sometimes, like love or hunger, it seems like the decision is out of our hands. We covet even when we don’t want to…That’s how we hang onto what we don’t want to lose.”
—Book Punch
To read the entire 200 words visit the review at Book Punch.
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Bigcitylit.com reviews Vocabulary Of Silence
George Wallace reviewd Vocabulary Of Silence for BigCityLit. He said of it, Vocabulary of Silence is a collection to savor and experience fully, a collection to educate ourselves with. It is a collection to read during a quiet time of day, when its full voice can reach to our hearts, as Veronica Golos does so beautifully, and ask the fundamental question stated so plainly in the title poem: "What makes us? I want it to be love."
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Hey, Small Press! reviews In the ice house
Hey, Small Press! reviewed In the ice house, saying of it,
Kaplan’s first collection of poetry somehow straddles the fence of simple and rich. The poet captures the natural world, how the changing of seasons looks and feels, and how it affects the confines of society. The chill in the air, as Kaplan describes it, come out of the page. ‘Branches shiver in the music. / The ice cuts in the quick of things. / The frantic outside.’ It is a beautiful marvel of nature at its coldest, through ice storms and frozen gardens, while also subtly following the birds, perhaps the true protagonists of this collection, who ‘Rise before the sun, rise with / the sun, constantly.’ Kaplan attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, is currently pursuing a PhD in literature and creative writing, edits and anthologizes numerous poetry anthologies, and has appeared in oodles of publications. Her poetry is radiant with a certain quiet wanderlust.
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