Dianne Borsenik Age of Aquarius: Collected Poems 1991-2016 Crisis Chronicles Press 978-1-940996-34-9 Dianne Borsenik is a kind of Cleveland Poetry legend. She attends everyone’s readings, travels with her buddy John Burroughs to read at Cafes and Coffeehouses all over the Midwest, runs a small press herself, and performs with a rare kind of energy that echoes so many forms of populism. Often funny, her poems are a kind off mix of heartbreak and comedy. She uses language that is clear, accessible and often uses rhetorical shifts. She can be bluesy, she can tell stories, she can write small imagistic poems, and she can make you laugh out loud, something rare in a poet. She isn’t scared of risking sentimentality and she can be directly political at times. She is musical. She can be unapologetically Reto-Beat. And she is…. Well, she is a fun poet. In the best manner a poet [...]
Sean Thomas Dougherty
All the hipsters are making their aggravating lists made of poets from Brooklyn and Amherst with good haircuts, trust funds and irony. Lists where the majority of poets have one book and slept with the writer of the list. I have nothing against poets sleeping with each other but it doesn’t necessarily make for a good list. In an age of truly remarkable work these lists are full of too many gutless poems made of flippant language that make one big metaphorical turn near the end and we are supposed to go ooooh and ahhhhh. Many of these poems show the shallow influence of a poet like Dorothea Lasky but without her wit and ability to create a voice of endearment. They want to be Lasky, but the young poets don’t have her talent. All they have is a Brooklyn address, connections, and great internet savvy. Oh and an MFA. [...]