The Moment We Finds Ourselves In: A Review of John Amen’s Illusion of an Overwhelm John Amen—Illusion of an Overwhelm NYQ Books, 2017 Page Length: 89 Retail: $15 John Amen’s Illusion of an Overwhelm continues the experimentation in language that was evident in his last few collections of poems, especially The New Arcana (NYQ Books), co-authored with Daniel Y. Harris, and strange theater (NYQ Books). Amen’s latest is a collage of voices and personas, a mix of the physical world and metaphysical one, and an examination of where we are in this present moment, specifically in the way that it addresses hyper-consumerism and carefully incorporates everyday speech into the stanzas, including text speak. At times, it can be difficult to keep track of all the voices within the collection. The [...]
A Poetry COMPENDIUM: A Couple of Books of Poetry I Blurbed and Many Other Books Big and Small That Found Their Way to Me That More People Should Know Because These Books That Aren’t Banned Not Yet Dear Lord They Aren't Banned But Didn’t Win Any Big Awards Just Might Get You Through These Difficult and Dangerous Times We Live In
Joe Weil—A Night in Duluth NYQ Books, 2016 Page Length: 104 Pages Retail: $15 After recently re-reading Raymond P. Hammond’s Poetic Amusement, a book that isn’t afraid to criticize the current state of academia, contemporary American poetry, and the pressure to publish or perish, I can’t help but find similarities between Hammond’s work and Weil’s latest collection of poems, A Night in Duluth, at least in terms of argument. The key similarity between the books is their willingness to take on the contemporary American poetry scene, namely all of the hobnobbing that goes on and the rapid speed at which some poems are churned out in order to fill a CV or earn tenure. Yet, the final pages of Weil’s book remind us of the power that poetry can still [...]
Suicide Hotline Hold Music by Jessy Randall Red Hen Press, 2016 $11.95 Sometimes it seems as if the poetry world is forever on a search for the New. Or I should say, New! Going further, the highest praise for poetry these days is to say it "reinvents language." As if the English language has been basically used up, and poets are tasked with making it work again, from the ground up. Or maybe it's that poetry itself no longer draws the audiences of yore: "yore" being...Elizabethan theater? Homer's Greece? Perhaps Kennedy's inauguration? In any case, one can safely say that there are two tribes in the poetry world: the highbrow, dominated by academia, and the lowbrow, dominated by pop music lyrics, poetry slams, rap, and greeting card/ Internet poetry. The [...]
"Joanna C. Valente is a gifted storyteller, crafting a deeply humanizing and expressive narrative within the pages of Xenos. To read this collection is to travel back in time, to be reminded that even then there were fires, even then so many of us were burning. Unifying and spirited, readers will find themselves returning to these poems over and over again."
Jason Allen—A Meditation on Fire Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2016 Page Length: 71 Retail: $14 Poems of Survival: A Review of Jason Allen’s A Meditation on Fire Jason Allen’s debut full-length collection of poems, A Meditation on Fire, reminds me of what remains in a boxing ring after the final round. The poems spin tales of mental and physical bruises, blood, scars, and shadowboxing. Yet, even in the most confessional, sobering work, poems that speak to addiction and sobriety, the book is not without its humor and salvation. Several of the poems are so visceral that we feel what the speaker feels as we thumb through the collection. The opening poem, “Blues Before Sunrise,” for instance, loosely plays with the blues form, namely the repetition, not the rhyme scheme [...]
(For Alfred) Edgar Allen Poe, Oh-Poe is established as foundational in American literature, as a classic of the New Voice that has hallmarked the reverberative roar of American artistic influence, but his legacy is one that is gravely compressed: most textbooks will feature a work of prose and a poem--usually "The Raven"--and texts for the lower levels will also feature illustrations that are as lurid as 1950s science fiction cinema posters. Instructional editions for secondary education put more emphasis on an unfortunately short life than they do on brief comments reducing Poe's work to that of America's brief Gothic tradition. Although Poe still appears in classrooms, his is a legacy that is now a cliché of corvids and black lipstick, an autumn lesson that is augmented by store displays for [...]
Chapbook: My Bedside Radio Author: Anthony Cappo Publisher: Deadly Chaps My Bedside Radio is a chapbook written in narrative form. The reader follows the narrator from childhood to young adulthood struggling to understand a seemingly contradictory and fearful world. It touches on themes such as sexuality, war, racism, social scripts and paternal abandonment. These poems are deceptively simple; they aren’t laden with metaphor or high diction and the lines rarely have more than five words in them. It’s as if the poet made a compromise between the complexity of life and the simple-hearted perception of a young person, as if Cappo told the young narrator, “Yes, I know how to write about your confusions, about your realizations, about your awe and loneliness and if you let me do it, I [...]
A Railroad Puja In the stampede at Godhra, the first child is trampled. The Sabarmati Express stalls at the platform like a suitcase bursting. The bogie’s coupling is cut, the railcar isolated, sprinkled with kerosene. Look what happens. When we collide a struck match drops. Our arms flail from shattered windows. Charred chappals graze the rails. Dusty pant legs flutter, brimmed with flames. Our mouths gasp small choking o’s. Now the whole city smells like paan, a gritty red splatter on gravel-strewn sidewalk. We know we are too many. When the burnt bodies are swathed in faded salwars, tossed in the bed of a rusted pickup, and carried to the Ganga, we want only the warm silt of flour dusted over a chapatti. We turn the fan on high, cup [...]
During 2016, the Spotlight Series has (usually) focused on the work of (approximately) two poets per month. This month's second poet, whose feature concludes this series, is Raena Shirali. Fox Frazier-Foley: Talk to me about the core of your creative drive and the expression it finds through poetry. There are lots of ways to be creative in this world—what motivates you to write poems, specifically? Additionally, what motivates you to navigate the poebiz landscape? Raena Shirali: Much of my motivation on a poem-by-poem basis comes from a resistance against silence, as well as a desire to enter into and provide a new understanding of various psychologies. I first fell in love with poetry because of persona, because it provided opportunity to escape my own thoughts (at least, that’s what [...]
Maria Mazziotti Gillan— What Blooms in Winter NYQ Books, 2016 Page Length: 116 Retail: $15 The last several months have been trying as an American citizen. Donald Trump’s candidacy has used xenophobic rhetoric to demonize minority groups and immigrants. In these times, Maria Mazziotti Gillan’s body of work, which often focuses on her Italian-American family heritage and celebrating the immigrant experience, is especially relevant. Her newest collection, What Blooms in Winter, draws on the deeply personal to vocalize her story and also give praise to the melting pot aspect that has always been a foundation of American culture. Gillan’s latest collection continues to draw on the narrative form, and most of the poems use personal memory to address broader issues, including the immigrant experience, climate change, and global terrorism. The [...]
Cannibal Island Housing Everyone who moves to Cannibal Island is given a house. The houses are okay. On one hand, the houses all have Thermo-Twin windows, which are very expensive and come with 3 full pages of warranties. On the other hand, everyone who sleeps in the houses on Cannibal Island has nightmares in which their fingernails fall off and there is a dead ferret under the sofa in the living room that they can’t seem to remember to call animal control about. But it’s all right, because every Tuesday the cannibals go door to door handing out cake! Cannibals make very good cake. Surprisingly, (and no one ever believes this at first), the cake is vegan. The cannibals also have excellent memories because if a non-cannibal expresses that they [...]
During 2016, the Spotlight Series focuses on two poets per month whose work and consciousness move us, challenge us, inspire us. This month’s first poet is Margaret Bashaar. Fox Frazier-Foley: Talk to me about the core of your creative drive and the expression it finds through poetry. There are lots of ways to be creative in this world—what motivates you to write poems, specifically? Additionally, what motivates you to navigate the poebiz landscape? Margaret Bashaar: As far as I can recall I’ve always been driven to create—I think most people are, honestly, it’s just a matter of cultivating that drive. I’ve created in a lot of different mediums—I used to sing for many years (I took voice lessons for almost 10 years), I played the violin when I was younger, I used [...]
In Christopher Morgan’s Fables with Fangs, (Ghost City Press, 2016) a micro chap of eight poems delivers us into the inner workings of the home, the symbolic place of safety, but there are no picket fences here. Morgan’s poems weave surrealism, fear, and humor into a classic tapestry that reveals how unsafe we all really are. The definition of a fable is a concise tale that intends to reveal a moral lesson by the end. Morgan tips his hat, signs off a good luck in those dark woods, friend, and leaves it at that. The lesson learned is watch out. In the poem, “The Bear,” A bear literally walks through the hallways of a home, pauses outside a sister’s room, her door ajar. Morgan writes: “I’m opening my door [...]
Musings on maneuvering through the rapey ol’ patriarchy. Margaret Bashaar’s newest chapbook hits the ground in heels kicking for the artery.
Yolanda J. Franklin’s work is forthcoming or has appeared in African American Review, Sugar House Review, Crab Orchard Review’s American South Issue, and The Hoot & Howl of the Owl Anthology of Hurston Wright Writers’ Week. Her awards include a 2012 and 2014 Cave Canem fellowship, the 2013 Kingsbury Award, two nominations from FSU for Best New Poets (2013 & 2014). She is the recipient of several writing retreat scholarships, including a summer at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Squaw Valley Community of Writer’s, Postgraduate Writer’s Conference Manuscript Conference at VCFA, the Callaloo Poetry Workshop in Barbados and Colrain’s Poetry Manuscript Workshop. Her collection of poems, Ruined Nylons, was a finalist for the 2013 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Award. She is also a graduate of Lesley University's MFA Writing Program and is a third-year PhD student at Florida State University.