Strange Countries
byIf poetry is the news that stays news, its daily headlines concern how the strange stays strange: the strangeness of countries, the strangeness of…
Reviews
The Nature of Trauma: A Review of Robbie Arnott’s The Rain Heron
byAward-winning Australian author Robbie Arnott’s first book to be published in the United States, The Rain Heron, out this month from Farrar, Strauss and…
Poetics of the Threshold: A Review of Hinge by Molly Spencer
by“For some…the liminal becomes their only dwelling place—becomes home”[1] Jane Hirshfield Perhaps it’s because I’ve recently crossed into midlife, the space between…
Spinning Hope Out of Darkness: A Review of Britton Shurley’s Spinning the Vast Fantastic
byAs society faces civil unrest and what feels like a never-ending pandemic, Spinning the Vast Fantastic, Britton Shurley’s debut chapbook, finds hope in images…
American Parables: A Review of American Faith by Maya C. Popa
byThe stand-out debut from Romanian-American poet Maya C. Popa is impossibly titled American Faith. Impossible because of the line-leader ideal that an American faith…
Tender and Unsparing: A Review of Leah Naomi Green’s The More Extravagant Feast
by“It will only be love that I love you with.” The world, held inside another world. This interconnectedness is at the core of Leah…
Unwinding Underground: A Review of Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s Rain in Plural
byRain in Plural by Fiona Sze-Lorrain. Princeton University Press, 2020. 105 pages. $17.95. The multiple layers and the angles of Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s fourth collection…
Unsettling the West: a Review of Joanna Pocock’s Surrender: The Call of the American West
byJoanna Pocock’s eco-memoir Surrender opens with rhythm, specifically the rhythm of the human lifecycle: mundane repetitions leading to ennui, and the dreaded advent of…
Wild Hope and the Wilderness of Lent
bySeveral years ago, I came upon Sandra Critelli’s stunning photograph of migrating cownose stingrays appearing as an intricate pattern of yellow, tan, and green…
A Gift on Offer to Us All: A Review of World of Wonders
byIt is winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and we are inside a moment of grand disconnection. Even if it were not for the pandemic,…