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 […]
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 […]
Leonard Gontarek’s The Long Way Home, Reviewed by Vivian Wagner
Leonard Gontarek The Long Way Home BlazeVOX [books] Reviewer: Vivian Wagner Leonard Gontarek’s The Long Way Home is, in fact, a long poetry collection—over 400 pages!—with a sweeping, sublime style to match its length. Perhaps that length is necessary to do what the collection seems to want and need to do: make sense of […]
Alexis Jackson’s My Sisters’ Country, Reviewed by Brian Fanelli
Alexis V. Jackson My Sisters’ Country Kore Press Reviewer: Brian Fanelli Alexis V. Jackson’s collection, My Sisters’ Country, is a book with impressive historical scope—integrating numerous influences and references, and underscoring everyone from Gwendolyn Brooks to June Jordan to the four Black Girls, Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, who […]
