Tag Archives: Book Reviews

Book Review: Kathleen Hellen’s Umberto’s Night

Posted on April 8, 2013 by

Kathleen Hellen’s Umberto’s Night won the 2012 Jean Feldman Poetry Prize. Its black cover, with an apocalyptic image of a city under an atomic fireball, hints at much of the content, made explicit by an epigraph from Umberto Eco’s Travels in Hyperreality: … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews, Jean Feldman Poetry Prize, Poetry, Poets, Washington Writers' Publishing House, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Book Review: Elisavietta Ritchie’s Feathers or Love on the Wing

Posted on March 3, 2013 by

Both bird and people watchers can catch colorful glimpses in Elisavietta Ritchie’s new chapbook Feathers or Love on the Wing. In this volume, Ritchie transforms birds and nature into metaphors for living, loving and dying. Ritchie’s poems appear against full-page watercolors … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews, Poetry, Watercolors | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Book Review: Jen Michalski’s Could You Be with Her Now

Posted on January 30, 2013 by

Jen Michalski explores what it means to be vulnerable in a modern society. At first blush, it appears that the only thing that the two novellas that comprise Jen Michalski’s collection Could You Be With Her Now have in common is … Continue reading →

Posted in Baltimore MD, Book Reviews, Books, Novellas, Prose, Publishing, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Book Review: Tara Hart’s The Colors of Absence

Posted on December 4, 2012 by

If the poetry in Tara Hart’s chapbook The Colors of Absence does nothing else, it should impel parents to reach out for their children, remembering to be grateful for the “maddeningly silken sack,” as Hart calls our babies, who may be grown, who may … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews, Columbia MD, Howard Community College, Poetry, Pushcart Prize, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Book Review: The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010

Posted on November 9, 2012 by

When The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 arrived in my mailbox numbering 769 pages, I was astonished but not surprised at the heft of the book. Great poets aren’t just born. By amassing words, they mature and develop, perfecting their … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Buffalo NY, Craft, Emily Dickinson, Emmy Award, Lucille Clifton, National Book Foundation Poetry Prize, Pablo Neruda, Poetry, Pulitzer Prize, Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, St Mary's College, TS Eliot, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Book Review: Michael Kimball’s Big Ray

Posted on October 13, 2012 by

You know you ought to look away. The Brahma bull is jack-knifing like a crazed 18-wheeler. Any moment now, it will throw the rider up into the air like just another clod of dirt. Then as he lies flat on … Continue reading →

Posted in Audacity, Baltimore MD, Book Reviews, Child Abuse, Craft, Death, Families, Fathers, Michigan, Michigan State University, New York University, Novels, Obesity, Publishing, The Collagist, Translations, Writers, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Book Review: Truth Thomas’s Speak Water

Posted on August 2, 2012 by

I live in an 1830s mill worker’s house on the Patapsco River in the picture-postcard part of Ellicott City, MD. A year ago, Truth Thomas, guest editor for our Winter 2012 Social Justice issue, sat at my dining room table. Before … Continue reading →

Posted in Audacity, Blogs, Book Reviews, Books, Ellicott City MD, Langston Hughes, Literary Journals, Poetry, Social Justice, The Bible, Washington DC, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Book Review: Dan Gutstein’s Bloodcoal & Honey

Posted on July 12, 2012 by

When I find myself unaccountably crying as I reach the end of a collection of poems, when the combined weight of the poet’s felt human presence and the loss seeping through the poems brings tears, I know something powerful is … Continue reading →

Posted in Blogs, Book Reviews, Books, Craft, Death, George Washington University, Hottest Professor in America, Literary Journals, Loss, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Maryland State Arts Council, Murder, Poetry, Publishing, Washington DC, Washington Writers' Publishing House, Washington Writers' Publishing House Poetry Prize, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Book Review: JoAnn Balingit’s Forage

Posted on January 23, 2012 by

Like many Poetry Friday regulars, I often assign myself a blog project for National Poetry Month. In 2010, I took readers on virtual road trip around the United States, profiling each state’s poet laureate. (I made it as far as … Continue reading →

Posted in Blog Posts, Book Reviews, Delaware, Families, Fathers, Immigrants, Mothers, National Poetry Month, Nature, Parents, Personal History, Poet Laureate, Poetry, Poets, Readings, Republic of the Philippines, Social Justice, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Book Review: Hot Sonnets

Posted on August 22, 2011 by

There’s something fishy about the sonnet. It isn’t supposed to work anymore. Hayden Carruth admits as much in “Sonnet 9,” As a poet I don’t care for the stale remainder of conventional sonnetry and goes on to chastise himself (mid-sonnet) … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews, Erotica, Poetry | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments