Reviews

You Just Wouldn’t Believe What That Kangaroo Did to This Courtyard: Prizefighting Death in CA Conrad’s ‘A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon’

by Lisa A. Flowers November 21, 2013 Reviews & Interviews

Last year, CAConrad’s A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon—a book that encompassed a perfect blend of street insolence and elegiac tribute—was published. Raunchy and tantrumy, insightful and spiritually reverent, Rumpelstilskin-stampingly angry, and uproariously hilarious, it was a kind of hash oil distilled from its author’s originality and strangeness, and an unforgettable hymn of praise to the work [...]

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Martin Rock’s DEAR MARK

by Levi Rubeck October 31, 2013 Reviews & Interviews

“Dear Mark” by Martin Rock Brooklyn Arts Press, 2013 ISBN 978-1936767199 When teaching poetry to middle school students, “ekphrasis” was often our go-to source of instant inspiration. Many kids freeze at open writing, and actively rebel against instructions (rightfully so), but when presented with an image, film, song, or other piece of art to write [...]

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Dear Beast Loveliness: Poems of the Body

by Grace Stansbery October 17, 2013 Reviews & Interviews

Dear Beast Loveliness: Poems of the Body By Tim J. Myers ISBN 978-1609641238 BlazeVOX Reviewed by Grace Stansbery In Dear Beast Loveliness, Tim J. Myers explores the physical and spiritual existences pertaining to the body. “The most profound of all human experiences is simply having a body,” he writes, and “of all our universal realities, [...]

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Rutherford, New Jersey’s Secret Post-Office: a review of John Gosslee’s Blitzkrieg

by Jeffrey Hecker October 10, 2013 Reviews & Interviews

Blitzkreig By John Gosslee Rain Mountain Press 2013 ISBN-13: 978-0989705110 70 pages The tree lay down on the garage roof and stretched. You have your heaven, it said, go to it. –William Carlos Williams, The Hurricane Maybe World War II ends earlier if white lab-coated William Carlos Williams scrawls “The Hurricane” longhand on the back [...]

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Lee Sharkey’s Calendars of Fire

by Heather Dobbins October 3, 2013 Reviews & Interviews

Tupelo Press. 2013. 60 pages. “Memory remembers matter remembers/ Make make make make” –Lee Sharkey In The Book of the Dead, Muriel Rukeyser writes, “What three things can never be done? Forget. Keep silent. Stand alone.” In Calendars of Fire, Lee Sharkey refuses to be that historian or activist, tamed in middle age, no longer [...]

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“If you remain stationary long enough, someone/will bump into you,” OR the Poetry Party is at Lauren Shapiro’s House

by Julie Wade September 26, 2013 Reviews & Interviews

Easy Math: Poems, Lauren Shapiro, Sarabande Books (Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry), pp. 65, $14.95, February 2013. Reading Easy Math by Lauren Shapiro is like being invited to an outrageous party where “the only escape/is realizing you’re already there.” It’s a come-as-you-are party, so readers are encouraged to show up with tousled hair, wearing…

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EMILY PETTIT’S BEAUTIFUL PRECISION WITHIN CHAOS

by Bianca Stone September 12, 2013 Reviews & Interviews
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Reading Goat In The Snow Emily Pettit’s lush lines unfold and unfold and unfold. She’s a master of the short line, gorgeously complex in her use of dark themes (strongest being a version of intense human anxiety) and poignantly reveals these themes in an unselfconscious, direct voice. The distinctive “leaping” I find in so much [...]

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Waite’s Butch Geography

by Caitlin Mackenzie August 1, 2013 Reviews & Interviews

Butch Geography by Stacey Waite Tupelo Press ISBN: 978-1-937797-25-7 Paperback, $16.95, 72p “God made gender a plaything.”—Stacey Waite Butch Geography is the first full-length book of poetry from Stacey Waite, award-winning author of three chapbooks and assistant professor of gender studies and creative writing at the University of Nebraska. The poems of Butch Geography explore [...]

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Thanks, Mr. Divine Comedy: Gregory Orr and John Smith dual review

by Joe Weil July 11, 2013 Reviews

Gregory Orr is famous and has won major awards. John Smith is a retired high school teacher from New Jersey who is a poet, well respected locally but unknown otherwise. Orr has blurbs from such luminaries as Albert Goldbarth, Ilya Kaminsky, and Naomi Shihab Nyef. John has blurbs from poets who have won grants and [...]

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Painting with Caroline Knox

by Sarah Eggers June 6, 2013 Reviews & Interviews
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In Caroline Knox’s nimble new collection Flemish, a poem entitled simply “They” begins: “They live in a mobile home/made of Adobe Caslon.” The elided antecedent here could very well be Knox’s poems; while maintaining a healthy awareness of themselves as constructed objects (“black and white graphic art,” Knox has called them), they simultaneously feel in [...]

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Robert Duncan: The Collected Early Poems and Plays

by Levi Rubeck May 21, 2013 Reviews
Back Camera

ISBN978-0520259263 It’s hard to justify a $50 book nowadays. Unless you’re a scholar looking to pore over every character in an author’s archive, a volume of collected work can easily overwhelm. Is there a non-academic audience for a tome like The Collected Early Poems and Plays by Robert Duncan (University of California Press)? I can’t [...]

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Two Works of Spiritual Aspiration: Flowers and Vogel

by Micah Towery May 2, 2013 Reviews & Interviews
emily-vogel-2

Poems are “instruments for thinking” (Allen Grossman). The object of a poet’s thought, however, is often unstated–especially in lyric poetry. Lyric poetry never speaks to an audience, and so–as it is when we are alone–the speaker does not feel compelled to explicitly state the object of thought but only the thoughts themselves. In this review, [...]

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Interview with Joe Weil [AUDIO]

by Nicholas Wilsey May 2, 2013 Reviews

The Eggshell Parade brings you an interview with poet Joe Weil. Related Posts Interview with Neil Shepard [AUDIO] Interview with Marie-Elizabeth Mali [AUDIO] Interview with Minrose Gwin [AUDIO] Interview with Emily Vogel [AUDIO] Interview with Kelli Russell Agodon [AUDIO]

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Interview with Katharine Coles [Audio]

by Nicholas Wilsey March 28, 2013 Reviews

The Eggshell Parade brings you a reading and interview from poet Katharine Coles. Katharine reads . Share this: Related Posts Interview with Michael Homolka [AUDIO] Interview with Michelle Bitting [AUDIO] Interview with Woody Brown [AUDIO]March 7, 2013 Interview with Kelli Russell Agodon [AUDIO] Interview with Neil Shepard [AUDIO]

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Interview with Woody Brown [AUDIO]

by Nicholas Wilsey March 7, 2013 Reviews

brings you a reading and interview from writer Woody Brown. Woody reads Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version . You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. Share this: Related Posts Interview with Michael Homolka [AUDIO] Interview with Michelle [...]

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The Mimic Sea

by Jeffrey Hecker January 10, 2013 Reviews

The Mimic Sea By Erica Bernheim 42 Miles Press, 2012 ISBN 978-0983074724’ I hope the Monarch butterfly I released this spring landed in Mexico tagged with the ending line of the opening poem of Erica Bernheim’s Moonrats: I’ve got rights and I should look into them. This is the fewest of the “first books” I’ve [...]

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