Sara Backer’s Such Luck, Reviewed by Ace Boggess
Sara Backer Such Luck Flowstone Press Reviewer: Ace Boggess Sara Backer’s first full-length poetry collection Such Luck navigates familiar tones and themes but also conjures worlds that are intimate and personal to the poet, such that the reader often feels as if he has a voyeuristic view on the lives of the narrators. In these […]
Mehnaz Sahibzada’s My Gothic Romance, Reviewed by Ann Wehrman
Mehnaz Sahibzada My Gothic Romance Finishing Line Press Reviewer: Ann Wehrman In My Gothic Romance, Mehnaz Sahibzada explores perceptions of personal experiences and relationships through confessional, lyrical, and narrative poems. The 2019 collection is structured in two parts, “Dark” (twenty-eight poems) and “Light” (thirty-five poems). True to life, the poems divert subtly from their assigned […]
Jared Smith’s That’s How It Is, Reviewed by David E. Poston
Jared Smith That’s How It Is Stubborn Mule Press Reviewer: David E. Poston Jared Smith’s new collection, That’s How It Is, is prefaced by a passage from Rilke’s novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge which describes how poetry is not simply expressed feelings, but the product of experience internalized over time. Smith’s career now […]
Michael Kriesel’s Zen Amen, Reviewed by Erica Goss
Michael Kriesel Zen Amen Pebblebrook Press Reviewer: Erica Goss Told in a book-length series of abecedarians, Michael Kriesel’s Zen Amen is a dizzying romp through one man’s investigation of the occult. The abecedarian, a 26-line poetic form that begins with the first (or last) letter of the alphabet and is followed by the next (or […]
Nathan Leslie’s Hurry Up and Relax, Reviewed by Charles Rammelkamp
Nathan Leslie Hurry Up and Relax Washington Writers Publishing House Reviewer: Charles Rammelkamp Hugh, the protagonist narrator of “Huggers Not Muggers,” one of the almost two dozen stories in Nathan Leslie’s darkly humorous prizewinning new collection, observes of Lyn, one of his co-workers at Huge, the mega-store where they work, that she’s “like some kind […]
