Read Donna Hemans’ essay on Ploughshares!
Date: January 4, 2021
The operator-assisted collect call comes on a July morning in 1987. It’s still early, before 9 a.m., and except for the telephone ringing, the house is quiet, my younger sister […]
Date: January 4, 2021
The operator-assisted collect call comes on a July morning in 1987. It’s still early, before 9 a.m., and except for the telephone ringing, the house is quiet, my younger sister […]
Date: January 4, 2021
Each month, Beyond The Page: A WGBH Book Club features a notable author, who takes part in a live Q&A with a WGBH personality to discuss the intricacies of that month’s novel. […]
Date: January 4, 2021
In these disunited states, containing within them many sovereign nations, we are in what Biodun Jeyifo called “arrested decolonization.” And yet, as Mukoma Wa Ngugi wrote, “The work of decolonization […]
Date: January 4, 2021
RIFT ZONE BY TESS TAYLOR Taylor released two books this year: a Dorothea Lange documentary project, and this collection of original poems that mine personal, California, American history, and changes […]
Date: January 1, 2021
Pasadena, CA: Red Hen Press, 2020. First Edition. Softcover. “There are perfectly good explanations/ for the simultaneous risks we juggle./ There are shipyards of baubles/ and harbors that have dried up/ and martinis made up […]
Date: December 18, 2020
Enjoy a virtual conversation with widely traveled poet and performer, Keith Flynn, on December 18th at 7PM! We will be discussing his newest collection of poetry, The Skin of Meaning. Catch the […]
Date: December 16, 2020
An old post from 2019, featuring Elizabeth Bradfield’s TOWARD ANTARTICA. Though she writes in a completely different style than Oliver, Elizabeth Bradfield’s Toward Antarctica (Boreal Books, 2019) also belongs in the hands […]
Date: December 16, 2020
Generally, I don’t care about the new year. The clock ticking from December 31st to January 1st doesn’t mean much, other than time moving as it always does, bringing all […]
Date: December 14, 2020
S2 E14 – Tracy Daugherty “In our Season 2 finale (probably), we welcome our friend Tracy Daugherty, the author of many books of nonfiction and fiction, to discuss his recent […]
Date: December 14, 2020
My list of the best Latinx poetry published this year includes After Ruben (Red Hen Press), a stunning collection of poems by Francisco Aragon, inspired by another of Latin America’s greatest poets […]
Date: January 24, 2023
Mozgovoy’s superb debut follows a boy’s coming-of-age as the U.S.S.R. crumbles. Alexey feels like an alien living in Taiga, Siberia. Born in 1985, he grows up in poverty and witnesses […]
Date: January 3, 2023
A new anthology of Indian authors writing in, and translating into, English, Future Library: Contemporary Indian Writing creates a new sense of contemporariness on the Indian literary scene. This arrangement distinguishes the […]
Date: January 3, 2023
A moving and musical set of poetic works. Bell’s second collection of poems offers a portrait of motherhood, devastation, and hope. The author’s first collection of poems, Bright Stain (2019),was a finalist […]
Date: January 3, 2023
Sometime Dead Can Dance drummer Peter Ulrich takes a detailed trip back in time, to catalogue the band’s journey from shoe-string budget experimentalists to internationally esteemed sound artists. Peter Ulrich […]
Date: January 3, 2023
Mason is a poet defined by place, if it is Southeast Asia on the Pacific Rim or Northwest America, his poems breathe life of the people around him as well […]
Date: December 13, 2022
Dead Can Dance formed in their native Australia in 1981. The core of the band was (and is) Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard. When they relocated to England and settled […]
Date: December 5, 2022
A refreshing book, I thought – a collection of short stories that this reviewer started from the beginning rather than picking and choosing which story to read next, based on […]
Date: November 30, 2022
Diane Thiel’s third collection of poetry, Questions from Outer Space, comes after an interlude during which the poet devoted her energies to a travel memoir (The White Horse) and the translation […]
Date: November 30, 2022
The evolution of blank verse from Milton to Wordsworth, via Cowper, was not solely a change in diction and subject matter. Even as classical and biblical themes were displaced by […]
Date: November 21, 2022
A POET KNOWN for his narratives, like Ludlow, the acclaimed historical-novel-in-verse turned opera, David Mason curates the archipelago of intensely satisfying lyric poems in Pacific Light with the skill of a consummate storyteller. […]