Poetry is hard to define even for those devoted to reading, writing, and studying it. “It is difficult,” William Carlos Williams famously wrote, “to get the news from poems,” but that news can be indispensable to understanding our humanity. It is, as Ezra Pound put it, “news that stays news.” Charles Wright calls it simply language that sounds better and means more; John Ashbery considered poetry language with a “blue rinse.” Whether one is thinking about poetry on the page or the poetry of a beloved’s body or a mountaintop hike or an exceptionally ecstatic meal, one thing most agree upon is that poetry helps us experience, if not explain, the ineffable, the inexplicable, the unfathomable, the impossible. The mysterious. “Why should the truth not be impossible?” asks Anne Carson. “Why should the impossible not be true?”
News & Review Type: Review
Lisa Russ Spaar reviews Didi Jackson’s MY INFINITY in the Second Acts column for the Adroit Journal!
KUOW Book Club reviews Kristen Millares Young’s SUBDUCTION
Ultimately, this is what makes “Subduction” so effective and gut-wrenching: The characters are human, capable of great kindness and great corruption. The story feels lived in, like an old house with secrets in every corner. It’s a bold piece that crosses lines and doubles down — much like the process of subduction itself.
BookMarks reviews Jim Tilley’s RIPPLES IN THE FABRIC OF THE UNIVERSE
What a great gift as Tilley proved to be a fine poet and a discerning observer of our world. Educated as a physicist with a PhD from Harvard and having spent a few decades as an award winning investor and actuary, the world is fortunate that Tilley pivoted to writing poetry. Blurbed by two of my favorite poets, Billy Collins and Jeffrey Harrison and adding Stephen Dunn to one of his poems, it’s clear that Tilley is no amateur.
Elom K. Akoto’s BLINDSPOT IN AMERICA is reviwed by Kirkus Review
Check out the review on July 19th!
Foreword reviews Sadie Hoagland’s CIRCLE OF ANIMALS
In Sadie Hoagland’s novel Circle of Animals, a woman goes through cycles of trauma, motherhood, complicated love, and perseverance in a misogynistic culture.
Library Journal and Elisabeth Clark review Aliah Wright’s NOW YOU OWE ME
VERDICT Well-crafted characters will draw in readers, and an intricately woven plot will keep them in their seats. Recommended for fans of Tana French, Gillian Flynn, and Karin Slaughter.
Medium and Liz DeGregorio review Danielle Vogel’s THE WAY A LINE HALLUCINATES ITS OWN LINEARITY
Danielle Vogel’s third book, the 2020 poetry collection The Way a Line Hallucinates Its Own Linearity, is much more than a group of poems elegantly arranged. It’s a conversation between the reader and Vogel’s narrator. While all works of art can be considered conversations between the viewer and the artist, Vogel takes this to the next level in her collection as the reader is drawn further into the narrator’s mind and body with every poem.
g emil reutter reviews David Mas Masumoto’s SECRET HARVESTS for North of Oxford!
In this memoir, David Mas Masumoto tackles a difficult time in American history as well as his own family history. Intertwined in this history of family, the imprisonment camps where over 100,000 Japanese Americans were placed following the entry of the United States in WWII. They were incarcerated not because of any crime but due to their appearance even though they were Americans. There were no camps for Italian Americans or German Americans. The internment camps remain a black mark on the history of the United States. The incident occurred before Masumoto was born and those who were abused did not speak of it as if they had done something wrong. They hadn’t, the government did. When his family was placed on trains to travel to internment camps, his Aunt Shizuko was left behind as a ward of the state due to her disability. She had suffered from Meningitis that left her with a severe mental disability and thus she was placed inside a state institution as her family was imprisoned in Arizona.
Jim Tilley’s RIPPLES IN THE FABRIC OF THE UNIVERSE reviewed by Lynette G. Esposito for North of Oxford!
Ripples in the Fabric of the Universe by Jim Tilley published by Red Hen Press, Pasadena, California in June this year, is an interesting mix of relationship perceptions and how the universe works in everyday life. The one hundred and forty-two pages are divided into three sections in the following order: from IN CONFIDENCE 2011, from CRUISING SIXTY TO SEVENTY 2014, from LESSONS FROM SUMMER CAMP 2016 and NEW POEMS.
In the first section on page nineteen, Tilley explores his relationship with his father in the poem HALF-FINISHED BRIDGE.
Elizabeth Smith of Necessary Fiction reviews Helen Benedict’s THE GOOD DEED!
The Good Deed reads like history that has been written over and over; perhaps it is just that the stories are as old as time, and displaced women and children—mute and damaged survivors—have been given voices. Benedict’s harrowing narrative highlights the ways in which hope and home are brutally wrenched from these refugees; the only profiteers are the people smugglers, who netted £183m out of misery last year alone.
New York Times Reviews DC Frost’s A PUNISHING BREED
NYT lists A PUNISHING BREED as one of their picks for the 4 Great Fictional Detectives. Check out the full review below!
Poems You Need Podcast shares excerpts from BLUE ATLAS by Susan Rich
Two poets read and review poems from Susan Rich’s poetry collection, BLUE ATLAS.
Kirkus Review of Aliah Wright’s Upcoming Debut Novel, NOW YOU OWE ME!
Kirkus Review writes, “Wright explores the ravages of psychopathy on society through the lives of two young killers. The Zanetti twins, Benjamin and Corinthia, are marked by violence from an early age, witnesses to their father committing a brutal murder. Both disgusted and fascinated by this traumatic event, they begin to take out a latent propensity for violence on animals. When Corinthia threatens to escalate by killing their younger brother, Ben intervenes and Corinthia is gravely hurt, which spurs their mentally ill mother to begin locking Ben in the basement. Ben and Corinthia eventually run away to live with their wealthy grandmother, whose kindness is not enough to undo years of abuse and erratic behavior.”
Check the link below for the full review!
Bookmonger: The negative capability of poets
”Negative capability” was initially described by 18th-century English poet John Keats as a poet’s way of living with uncertainty, or with openness to competing moods.
In two recently published volumes, two Northwest poets offer very distinctive embodiments of negative capability.
Tinderbox Poetry’s Sarah K. Carey Reviews BLUE ATLAS by Susan Rich
In her latest book, Blue Atlas, newly released from Red Hen Press, award-winning Washington poet Susan Rich confronts and chronicles her world before, during and after an abortion she underwent as a young woman in the mid-1980s. The abortion provides a point from which Rich’s speaker measures her relative distance, in physical and emotional space and time, to whatever her ultimate truth might be — her true north.
At the same time, Rich recognizes that no truth is absolute and no destination final. Past, present and future exist within the 50 poems in this ambitious work, which weave through time and place as Rich continually orbits the traumatic event that she refers to in “Binocular Vision” as “my choiceless choice.”