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 [...]
BEYOND THE REFERENCE: An Interview with Novelist Ravi Howard
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 [...]
From Shadows into the Light: A Review of Raina León’s BOOGEYMAN DAWN
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, [...]
A Mother’s Blood: A Review of Laurie Ann Guerrero’s Montoya Prize-Winning Debut A TONGUE IN THE MOUTH OF THE DYING
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 [...]
More Hunger Than a Body Can Hold: A Review of PRELUDE TO BRUISE by Saeed Jones
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 [...]
Burning Slowly Through the Body: A Review of Nicole Terez-Dutton’s IF ONE OF US SHOULD FALL
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 [...]
Learning to Break Dance on the Page: A Conversation with Douglas Kearney
by Abdul Ali A decade before publishing his full-length debut collection Fear, Some, Douglas Kearney was an active member of an all-black comic book collective, “Flatline Comics,” on the campus of Howard University. You can see an illustrator’s sensibility in all of his books, especially in their signature covers. This is most pronounced on the [...]
Complicated Charm: Five Questions for Reginald Harris
Harris, Reginald. Autogeography. Evanston, IL: Northwestern Univ. Press, 2013. 62 pp. $16.95 (paper), $16.95 (e-book). (Winner of the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Book Prize — website) *_____*_____* Reginald Harris, former IT Manager for the Enoch Pratt Library, has moved on up to the big(ger) city of New York to become Poetry in The Branches [...]
Cross Fading: A Review of Kiese Laymon’s HOW TO SLOWLY KILL YOURSELF AND OTHERS IN AMERICA
Laymon, Kiese. How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. Evanston, IL: Agate Bolden, 2013. 144 pp. $15.00 ($9.99 epub). [View title on Goodreads.com] Reviewed by Daniel Peña In his debut collection of essays, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, Kiese Laymon opens with a series of letters to his Uncle [...]
That New Poet Smell: A Review of Alex Dimitrov’s Debut Collection BEGGING FOR IT
Dimitrov, Alex. Begging for It. New York, NY: Four Way Books, 2013. 96 pp. $15.95 Reviewed by Stephen Zerance [View title on Goodreads] The image that adorns the cover of Alex Dimitrov’s Begging for It—a photograph from “Rimbaud in New York,” one of David Wojnarowicz’s first major series of works—is an interesting introduction to this [...]
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