Lyrical Edginess, a Review of Jake Skeets’ “Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers”
This review is not online… “Lyrical Edginess, a Review of Jake Skeets’ Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers in Tar River Poetry, Volume 61, Number 1, fall 2021, pp. 54-57
Review of Diana Marie Delgado’s “Tracing the Horse”
https://coloradoreview.colostate.edu/reviews/tracing-the-horse/ (Review published in The Colorado Review, July 2020) In her strong, debut poetry collection, Tracing the Horse, Diana Marie Delgado comes to terms with cultural forces that limit her, especially those of machismo—as in “Songs of Escape” where “Men are the only islands / I’ve ever lived on. / I’ll never get away.” Delgado,…
Review of Ashley Toliver’s “Spectra”
https://www.massreview.org/node/7490/ (Review published in The Massachusetts Review, July 2019) “Kinesis,” the first poem in Ashley Toliver’s powerful first book Spectra, frames the collection’s primary strength: that of movement through trauma and the emotionally dark places in the female self, where one can be “plumbing / a violent kinesis. “This movement takes place via Toliver’s poetic…
Review of Anna Maria Hong’s “Age of Glass”
https://coloradoreview.colostate.edu/reviews/age-of-glass/ (Review published in Colorado Review, May 2019) The speaker in “A Parable” concludes, “It was our time to savage.” Thus begins Anna Maria Hong’s vision in her first poetry collection, Age of Glass, where a fierce and uncompromising feminine voice asserts and empowers itself, notably in a literary landscape that has been dominated by…
Review of Josephine Yu’s “Prayer Book of the Anxious”
https://www.neworleansreview.org/prayer-book-of-the-anxious/ (Review published in New Orleans Review, October 2018) In the middle of Josephine Yu’s Prayer Book of the Anxious, the speaker in “Prayer to Saint Joseph: For the Restless” pleads for this patron saint not to lead us away “when unease thickens like lime calcifying // in the porcelain basins of our chests.” By…
Review of Caleb Curtiss’ “A Taxonomy of the Space Between Us”
https://www.raintaxi.com/a-taxonomy-of-the-space-between-us/ (Review published in Rain Taxi, spring 2016) “Even now, I know I could use this moment, / / this dying thing to remember her with, / but I don’t want to.” Thus, triggered by a dead bird, Caleb Curtiss in A Taxonomy of the Space Between Us resists (yet retains) the memory of his…
Review of Camille Rankine’s “Incorrect Merciful Impulses”
http://losangelesreview.org/book-review-incorrect-merciful-impulses-camille-rankine/ (Review published in The Los Angeles Review, March 2018) Camille Rankine’s compelling debut collection, Incorrect Merciful Impulses, enacts the struggles of one trying to connect broadly with society and more intimately with both another person and one’s self. The threat of disconnection is everywhere. In the opening poem, “Tender,” the speaker begins: Dear patriot…
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Robert Manaster 