Barbara Hamby’s Bird Odyssey, Reviewed by Lee Rossi

Barbara Hamby Bird Odyssey University of Pittsburgh Press Reviewer: Lee Rossi Barbara Hamby may be contemporary poetry’s most personable tour guide. In Bird Odyssey, her sixth and latest volume of poetry, she takes us on three separate trips – through Russia, the Deep South, and Classical Greece – all of them informed by her promiscuous […]

Jenny Molberg’s Marvels of the Invisible, Reviewed by Lee Rossi

Jenny Molberg Marvels of the Invisible Tupelo Press Reviewer: Lee Rossi Finding an expanse of previously unexplored wilderness, the naturalist is keen to discover an unknown species. Likewise a critic, opening a first book, looks for signs of new life. Jenny Molberg’s Marvels of the Invisible provides many such clues, all hinting at some chameleon-like, […]

Mary Makofske’s World Enough, and Time, Reviewed by Lee Rossi

Mary Makofske World Enough, and Time Kelsay Books Reviewer: Lee Rossi A book of poems is like one of those fabulous creatures from a medieval bestiary—part lion, part snake, part bat—not all the parts convinced that they belong together. Mary Makofske’s World Enough, and Time is such a beast, confessional free-verse narratives conjoined with Metaphysical […]

Mischa Willett’s Phases, Reviewed by Lee Rossi

Mischa Willett Phases Cascade Books Reviewer: Lee Rossi The latest volume in the Poiema Poetry Series, which, as the series editor declares, “presents the work of gifted poets who take Christian faith seriously,” Mischa Willett’s Phases is less noteworthy for its declarations of religious belief than for the way it mimics poets for whom Christianity […]

Lisa Allen Ortiz’s Guide to the Exhibit, Reviewed by Lee Rossi

Lisa Allen Ortiz Guide to the Exhibit Perugia Press Reviewer: Lee Rossi In Guide to the Exhibit, Lisa Allen Ortiz offers the reader a tour of her own personal museum of natural (and unnatural) history, the product of a lifetime’s devoted collecting. Filled with wonders—birds abound but also mastodons and minerals, gemstones and microfossils—the book […]