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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Guerrero, Laurie Ann. A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying. South Bend, IN: U of Notre Dame P, 2013. 66 pp. $15.00 (paper), $15.00 (electronic). Reviewed by Niki Herd [View title on Goodreads.com] Contemporary poetry collections about war bring to mind, for me, the survivalist frame of mind that weighs the pages of Yusef [...]

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Jones, Saeed. Prelude to Bruise. Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press, 2014. 124 pp. $16.00 (paper). [View title on Goodreads] Reviewed by Will Byrne Saeed Jones’ debut poetry collection, Prelude to Bruise, is a juggler with many pins in the air.  Identity, sex, violence, coming of age, family, and loss—to name just a few—are all laid-out [...]

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Terez-Dutton, Nicole. If One of Us Should Fall. Pittsburgh, PA: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 2012. 88 pp. $15.95 (paper). [View title on Goodreads.com] Reviewed by Khadijah Queen The traveling in Nicole Terez Dutton’s If One of Us Should Fall has less to do with wanderlust than it does with staging and restaging memories across a [...]

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