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 4, 2021
“But the one thing I know for sure, this is the one life you have and you have to make it work.” Some novels make the meat and bones of […]
Date: January 4, 2021
Seasons of the pandemic and some books that bore witness (2020 Small Press Roundup, Part I) by Rebecca Stoddard Sometime back in the beginning of November, my computer crashed and […]
Date: January 4, 2021
5 stars I wasn’t sure what to expect with this collection of short stories and I don’t read them often so I was pleasantly surprised to find that once I […]
Date: December 16, 2020
The lyric essay form, reliant on gaps and fragmentation, beautifully aligns with Koets’ own experience of compression and expansion, as her narrator moves from a closeted existence to one of […]
Date: December 14, 2020
Author/Editor/Poet Rob Mclennan in his blog, reviews Danielle Vogel’s collection THE WAY A LINE HALLUCINATES ITS OWN LINEARITY. The author of Between Grammars (Noemi Press, 2015) and Edges & Fray (Wesleyan University Press, 2019) […]
Date: December 10, 2020
We are all, in this pandemic, a living elegy; there are loves, possibilities, selves, ways of life that are dead, a mobile mortality poets have always known and used their […]
Date: December 2, 2020
It’s difficult for me to find comparisons to these poems. There are qualities that bring to mind Milosz’s humble prophesies or the earthy divinities of Robert Bly. Some of Brewer’s […]
Date: November 30, 2020
Ludvigson’s poems are quiet and linguistically unadorned, a testament to the starkness of bereavement. Despite the simplicity of her language, Ludvigson dedicates many of her poems to the careful description […]
Date: November 30, 2020
Maurya Simon’s The Wilderness: New and Selected Poems 1980-2016 (Red Hen Press 2018, 218 pages) represents a life of questioning and perception, whether the scene is a backyard or a street in […]
Date: November 18, 2020
Reading Erin Coughlin Hollowell’s Every Atom, a book of poems about her aging mother, reminds me of my grandmother’s history. Like Gracie, Hollowell was her mother’s youngest, born when her […]