Brinkley, Jamel. A Lucky Man. Graywolf. Minneapolis: 2018. 264 pp. $26.00 (cloth). [View Title on Goodreads] Reviewed by Brian Gilmore It was Edgar Allan Poe who wrote that “the long poem is a paradox.” Poe’s famous exploration of limitations of the long poem form was declared to shine brighter light on short story, or “the [...]

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Reviewed by Pat Valdata

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Elhillo, Safia. The January Children. Lincoln,NE: U of Nebraska P, 2017. 72 pp. $15.95 (paper). [View Title on Goodreads] *__________*__________* As a writer who was born in Cameroon, a place imagined and conceived by Europeans, I continue to reflect on the impact of the encounter between those who named it and those who actually occupy [...]

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Hopper, Ailish. Dark~Sky Society. Kalamazoo, MI: New Issues, 2014. 97 pp. $15.00 (paper). [View title on Goodreads.com] Reviewed by Ellen Hagan “The flash-/ bulb pops; the splash/ kerosene/ [door    behind]/and then the flint/ the arcing match—/ flame” ends Ailish Hopper’s opening poem: “Self Portrait as Smoke,” in her first full-length collection, Dark~Sky Society (12). As [...]

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Allo, Viola. Bird from Africa. Brooklyn, NY: Akashic Press, 2015. [View title on Goodreads.com] Reviewed by Kangsen Feka Wakai Viola Allo’s chapbook Bird from Africa is part of Akashic Books’ 8 New-Generation African Poets chapbook box set, which also features works from Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Angola. Edited by Kwame Dawes and [...]

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Williams, Phillip B. Thief in the Interior. Farmington, ME: Alice James Books, 2016. 82pp. $15.95 (paper). [View title on Goodreads.com] Reviewed by Khadijah Queen From the start, Phillip B. Williams’ Thief in the Interior situates the reader in sensorial language both abject and beautiful, horrific and tender. Leading with salt, sweat, breath, the body’s automatic excretions; [...]

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Nicholson, David. Flying Home: Seven Stories of the Secret City. Arlington, VA: Paycock Press, 2015. 147 pp.  $12.95 (paper). [View title on Goodreads.com] Reviewed by Brian Gilmore In the 1937 essay “Blueprint for Negro Writing,” Richard Wright wrote that “no theory of life can take the place of life.” It is, according to Wright, “the [...]

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Bachmann, Beth. Do Not Rise. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2015. 72 pp. $15.95 (paper). Reviewed by Will Byrne “The dead we__________burn; the living we bury in our faces.” _____~From the poem “shell” Beth Bachmann’s 2009 collection of poems, Temper—her debut—is a fascinating book: a true-life murder mystery twisted with familial tragedy, pressed down on [...]

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by Joseph Ross Though the Civil War is relatively distant memory, the story of the American South remains a conflict.—the reality being that the South belongs to the ancestors of those who fought under the rebel flag as much as it belongs to the ancestors of those who fought to escape the institutions for which [...]

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León, Raina. Boogeyman Dawn. Cliffs of Moher, Ireland: Salmon Poetry, 2013. 93 pp. $13.00 (paper). [View title on Goodreads.com] Reviewed by Brian Gilmore Raina León’s latest poetry collection, Boogeyman Dawn, ultimately wonders about our shadowy thoughts and impulses and where these ideas disappear to when the daylight, or perhaps the daylight within all of us, [...]

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