Vivian Faith Prescott’s Old Woman with Berries in Her Lap, Reviewed by Vivian Wagner

Vivian Faith Prescott Old Woman with Berries in Her Lap University of Alaska Press Reviewer: Vivian Wagner Vivian Faith Prescott’s Old Woman with Berries in Her Lap is a collection of poems about colonialism, survival, and the reclaiming of lost cultural identity. These poems explore the Sámi diaspora and one descendant’s desire to discover, re-narrate, […]

Gloria Gervitz’s Migrations: Poem, 1976-2020, Reviewed by Maria Rouphail

Gloria Gervitz Migrations: Poem, 1976-2020 Translated by Mark Schafer New York Review Books Reviewer: Maria Rouphail Truth be told, until Mark Schafer’s translation of Migrations (Migraciones) I had never read anything by the late Mexican poet, Gloria Gervitz (1943-2021). Fault the chasms in my education (I have a doctorate in the literature of the United […]

Charles Rammelkamp’s The Field of Happiness, Reviewed by David E. Poston

Charles Rammelkamp The Field of Happiness Kelsay Books Reviewer: David E. Poston Charles Rammelkamp’s new collection, The Field of Happiness, brought to mind Ted Kooser. In a 1992 essay in Can Poetry Matter?, Dana Gioia characterizes Kooser as striking “the difficult balance between profundity and accessibility” and goes to great lengths to defend Kooser as […]

Christopher Shipman – Fog of Tongues

Fog of Tongues                                       Once upon a time                                                           words were beasts. They stalked the things they named until they became those things.                                                     Fog                                                              stumbled behind. We lived and died in the direction of words— a religion of everything unsaid.                                     Not an image named. Only sun and shadow— that violent blur                                     between moon waxing gibbous               moon waning crescent. […]

Chanel Brenner’s Smile or else, Reviewed by Ann Wehrman

Chanel Brenner Smile or else Press 53 Reviewer: Ann Wehrman Chanel Brenner’s collection, Smile or else, which won the 2021 Press 53 Award for Poetry, includes the poem, “Facebook Post: Mother Son Hike at Solstice Canyon: 183 Likes.” Composed in alternating lines of regular then italicized font, the poem contrasts the author’s rhapsodic perceptions during […]