"But there is a depth to disaster that dwells in the personal. It’s a rhythm the disaster uses to play through the body. It’s a portioning, as Triplett reveals in Bad Forecast."
from my review of Steffan Triplett's Bad Forecast
www.thekalliope.org/review-bad-f...
"Like these are the monologues when you barely have time to think. Because the glamorous life is always pressing in on the self."
from my review of Sadie Dupuis's Cry Perfume
www.thekalliope.org/review-cry-p...
Cindy Juyong Ok's translations in a recent issue of Gulf Coast were so good. I took some extra time to write about Kim Hyesoon's "In Front of a Round Wall"
www.thekalliope.org/everything-c...
"On another level, though, the book is about women growing through girlhood to arrive at what seems inevitable, the life of a mother."
from my review of Diamond Forde's The Book of Alice
www.thekalliope.org/review-the-b...
"Unfortunately, the lyric does not ensure 1:1 representation, especially when it comes to something like generational trauma."
from my review of Asiya Wadud's No Knowledge Is Complete Until It Passes Through My Body
www.thekalliope.org/review-no-kn...
"Zhang’s book feels like family, being trapped in family. Or being trapped in that moment when you’re getting shit off your chest, maybe about someone named Michael..."
from my review of Jenny Zhang's Dear Jenny, We Are All Find
www.thekalliope.org/review-dear-...
"The glacier leaves the impression of stagnancy; it’s literally frozen in time. And this reality makes it an especially sharp analogy for grief."
from my review of Danika Stegeman's Ablation:
www.thekalliope.org/review-ablat...
"She is often weighted with a concern to really understand what concerns her. And out of those layering concerns, a series of impressions emerge. But those impressions aren’t presented in a syllogistic style."
from my review of Tracy Fuad's Portal
www.thekalliope.org/review-portal
"For me, Molnar’s lyric essay, “Minutes: A Remembrance” comes closest to the layering complexity I appreciated in her first book, CHORUS."
from my review of Daniela Naomi Molnar's Protocols: An Erasure
www.thekalliope.org/review-proto...
"The poems are more about nature framing what the poet has to say. Or nature blurring past the natural environment so you can read the human nature feeling you get while you’re in nature!"
from my review of Ben Estes's ABC Moonlight
www.thekalliope.org/review-abc-m...
"Bludworth de Barrio’s poetics feels like an atonal orchestral work. The kind whose notes touch the familiar, but also deviate from that familiarity in an unsettling but satisfactory fashion."
from my review of Emily Bludworth de Barrios's Rich Wife
www.thekalliope.org/review-rich-...
"That’s what Stephanie Cawley’s book is about. Being in the middle of systems, whether it’s a system called “plot” or “loving relationship” or “hot sex.” Systems that surround them like a cocoon."
from my review of Stephanie Cawley's No More Flowers:
www.thekalliope.org/review-no-mo...
"Declaration screens from me the truth that throws the poet into declaring these things rather than granting the direct access a declarative statement would carry."
from my review of Elisa Gonzalez's Grand Tour
www.thekalliope.org/review-grand...
"And I am trying my hardest to live a life on earth. Just like Miller has asked me to. I’d like to imagine the different spaces where you could draw an emotional cul-de-sac."
from my review of Nora Claire Miller's Groceries:
www.thekalliope.org/review-groce...
What G. C. Waldrep does with "grievance" and faith in this poem published a while ago in Bennington Review is remarkable. Who lodges grievance with whom in a relationship with God?
www.thekalliope.org/it-s-never-t...
"I’ve heard him described as a political poet. Capable of seeing what political structures are borne out of people living in a city, living in northern climates. Arranged according to these political structures."
from my review of George Oppen's This In Which:
www.thekalliope.org/review-this-...
"How does the cheerleader fit alongside the considerate math teacher fit alongside the aging woman whose private life feels distant from the feminine life she’d occupied."
from my review of Laura Read's But She Is Also Jane
www.thekalliope.org/review-but-s...
"But where Smith lays out order, with boxes boxing one another in, Webb’s garden, or her house lays out the bewildering heaven she occupies in her grief."
from my micro-REVIEW of Lindsey Webb's Plat:
www.thekalliope.org/micro-review...
Ryan Taylor has captured the poetry existing in the between space of "masculinity" and "Americanism" in his poem "American Planet." I've written an enthusiastic consideration of that space at the link.
www.thekalliope.org/Not-just-a-p...
"Some might say the key to enjoying a Natalie Shapero poem is knowing how to laugh."
from my review of Natalie Shapero's Stay Dead
www.thekalliope.org/review-stay-...
"Her genre is not the instruction manual. More like what do you feel like immediately after you’ve read a set of instructions."
from my recent review of Valerie Hsiung's The Naif:
www.thekalliope.org/review-the-n...
"Koestenbaum is really into reality, and art is reality or runway or state of mind or perspective or a bunch of lewd acts that puts the randy in a name like “Randy.” Include the quotations."
from my goodreads review of Wayne Koestenbaum's Stubble Archipelago
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
"His poems belong to whatever space is carved when the world, or the place you’re from, or the dominant culture, sets a fire, and everywhere you look, it rings around your existence."
from my goodreads review of Isaac Pickell's It's not over once you figure it out
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
"In essence, the poems fashion the self as a delicate formation. Someone who’s in process, in transition to a new outlook on life, with a new self to do that looking."
from my goodreads review of Shelley Wong's As She Appears
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
"Nordgren’s book is hard for me to describe. Maybe it’s writing that got caught in costume. Dressed as a period piece for a fashion magazine."
from my goodreads review of Sarah Rose Nordgren's Feathers: A Bird-Hat Wearer's Journal
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
"It’s like Ashbery wants you to combine a lava lamp with a villanelle. First, a line with an imaginative twist on a present circumstance, and by the next line it’s morphed into a different shape."
from my goodreads review of Hotel Lautréamont, by John Ashbery
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
"The relationship between irony and wonder often feels uneven to me. Irony is so tall, incisive, and imposing on a sentence or a poem"
from my goodreads review of Rosmarie Waldrop's The Nick of Time
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
"In Zhou’s book, the triangulation is more sustained. Which allows for especially evocative commentary on who she perceives herself to be, and who she is now after the different pressures that come with adulthood."
from my goodreads review of Amelia Zhou's Repose
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
"In here, doing-ness revolves mainly around the temporality or shapeliness of an impression. What it takes to experience a moment, while many other moments inflect upon your experience of that moment."
from my goodreads review of Bill Carty's We Sailed on the Lake
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...