book reviews
Reviews of the best poetry books, collections and anthologies; discover poems and up-and-coming poets across all cultures, genres and themes.
A Child of Two Families Reveals Herself Through Poetry
Carol Anderheggen draws her the readers of her work inside her poetic world,"...this space called home...," where "there are no safe harbors / only life rafts / here and there..." In her 2017 poetry collection Born-child, published by Finishing Line Press, Anderheggen explores the depths of internal consternation that can be found in a child of adoption. In this particular work, "home" is not depicted in its traditional sense as comforting or warm. The feelings of comfort and happiness are instead found emanating from the natural world, "in the marsh," "...the child rises, / touches the earth goodbye..." and is able to find a bliss which lets her "...believe for an instant / that there were not / wolves at my doorstep..."
By Laura DiNovis Berry5 years ago in Poets
An Anti-Fairytale Book of Poetry
Christine Stoddard's poetry collection 'Water for the Cactus Woman', published through Spuyten Duyvil Publishing in 2018, weaves an almost anti-fairy tale onto the page. The speaker, a biracial character yearning for her mother's love and reaching out for some kind of connection with her dead grandmother, reveals that a massive change in location cannot transform what is bitter, bittersweet—frustrated and frustrating—into anything other than what it is. It is as the speaker says, "A grave is a grave is a grave / unless that grave belongs / to someone you loved."
By Laura DiNovis Berry5 years ago in Poets
Pause for a Poet: Anne-Adele Wight
[This interview was conducted by Laura DiNovis Berry (LDB) by phone in the summer of 2018.] The phone rings and immediately there is a cheery voice on the other line greeting me enthusiastically. I am speaking with Anne-Adele Wight (AW), a woman as vivacious, energetic, and unique as her poetry. I had been eager to speak with her after discussing her poetry collection, The Age of Greenhouses, with my compatriots at a meeting of the Kennett Library Poetry Discussion Club.
By Laura DiNovis Berry5 years ago in Poets
Walk from Brook Avenue into History
New York City may have only been the fifth girl in Sex and the City, but W. R. Rodriquez honors the entire state of New York by raising it up to play the role of the cosmos in From the Banks of Brook Avenue. Rodriquez's 2015 poetry collection delivers a seething critique of the United States of America's torrid past and a myriad of hypocrisies while struggling with the fact that no entity is an entirely flat character. All things are multifaceted, multidimensional in both their evil and good doings. Nothing is pure, "...the world is too crooked / for that;" everything is tainted and yet everything is beautiful. The complexity of the beings present in his work creates both heroes and antagonists.
By Laura DiNovis Berry5 years ago in Poets
Art Imitates Life in Snyder's Work
Flashback after flashback whirls the readers of Sarah Dickenson Snyder's 2017 poetry collection, The Human Contract, through an entire lifetime. The speaker recollects her childhood and her process of growing up in vivid detail. Her parents are revived, in a way too, through this impressive collection of verse. Snyder conjures them up when they were thriving adults and sets them back down that path which inevitably leads them into their physical decline. Her grandfather is featured in the text as well before she moves on to the forays of parenting her own children.
By Laura DiNovis Berry5 years ago in Poets
In Review: 'Frenetic Lines'
D. Gabrielle Jensen's 2018 poetry collection, Frenetic Lines, reads as a youthful artistic creation; it is not that the work is childlike, but rather similar to an adolescent red-tailed hawk. The text is well on its way to becoming an elegant predator, but it is still working out how its wings operate, how to properly sink each talon into its kill, learning when it is best to let loose that wind cracking screech.
By Laura DiNovis Berry5 years ago in Poets
Carla M. Cherry's Poems Are Pearls
These Pearls Are Real is a beautiful, tragic, uplifting and colorful collection of poetry, but its more fascinating feature is that it is absolutely pulsating with life. Carla M. Cherry's 2018 collection, published though Wasteland Press, is a living, breathing creation.
By Laura DiNovis Berry5 years ago in Poets
Nilsen's 'Without A Kiss' Is Not Without a Warning
While Phoebe Nilsen's chapbook is at first unassuming in its slender arrangement, its warning to the readers who trace their fingers down its white pages is great. Published in 2018 by Finishing Line Press, Without a Kiss explores the deep consequences of a missed romantic opportunity along with the bittersweet nostalgia and tortuousness regret that comes with confronting it. Even the cover (designed by Elizabeth Maines McCleavy) of this well crafted collection, in all its black and white glory, works to push readers back into their own past mistakes whether those took place yesterday or years ago for some.
By Laura DiNovis Berry5 years ago in Poets
Dunn's Poetic Work Intoxicates
Readers be warned: To read Mark D. Dunn's 2014 poetic collection Even the Weapons is to feel the headiness of imbibing too much wine. His work is at once grounded in a thick snow fall and yet still, these poems are lifted off into more cerebral, cosmic planes. The poetry within this well crafted collection fluctuates between the realms of daydream and every day without bothering with any of reality's stringent tethers. In all honesty, the second movement is what can be best described as a stream of consciousness; readers will lose themselves in a twirling dream state where the poetic lines become touch points of thought, of connection, of some kind of reality rather than simple pretty words in boxed up stanzas.
By Laura DiNovis Berry5 years ago in Poets