House of Burnt Offerings
Judith Skillman House of Burnt Offerings Pleasure Boat Studio Press ISBN: 978-0-912887-32-6 Reviewer: Ann Wehrman “And, by the way, don’t worry about what a poem means. Do you ask what a song means before you listen? Just listen. Meaning lives there in a field of powerful understanding before it ever makes its way to words […]
The Teleology of Dunes
Martin Settle The Teleology of Dunes Main Street Rag Publishing Company ISBN: 978-1-59948-498-3 Reviewer: Richard Allen Taylor I didn’t know that word “teleology,” so, like any word lover, I looked it up. My guess was that it would have something to do with the study of movement, as in the shifting of dunes across the […]
The Beast and the Innocent
Diana Pinckney The Beast and the Innocent FutureCycle Press ISBN: 978-1-938853-71-5 Reviewer: Cindy Hochman What a mess we’ve made, the world sinking under our accumulation. —“The Woman Who Loves Takeout,” Diana Pinckney There is no question that Diana Pinckney’s richly knit narrative poems are closer in grace and refinement to Elizabeth Bishop’s than William Blake’s, […]
The Braided Light
Gail Peck The Braided Light Main Street Rag Publishing Company ISBN: 978-1-59948-521-8 Reviewer: Lynn Levin Gail Peck’s new book, her eighth collection of poems, is The Braided Light, the winner of Main Street Rag’s 2014 Lena Shull Contest. This graceful collection comprises mostly ekphrastic poems, that is, poems that describe works of art, in this […]
McNally’s Simply to Know Its Name
Robert Aquinas McNally Simply to Know Its Name Grayson Books ISBN: 978-0-9913861-7-8 Reviewer: George Wallace In “Steelheading,” the opening salvo in Robert Aquinas McNally’s new collection of poems, we find a fisherman wading into stormy river waters, casting spoons and threading lures in the finest Western Lit fashion. Doing battle with the elements—bone-chilling, icy elements. […]
