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New Books In Poetry

KEN POBO When the Light Turns Green – SPRUCE ALLEY PRESS 2014

A garden is not always a garden: our metaphors speak of our experiences and musings. Pobo shows the reader how seasons can mean change of weather, passage of time, and realizations of mortality

LISA GLUSKIN STONESTREET The Greenhouse BULL CITY PRESS 2014

In a collection that subverts sentiment even as it delves into the rich inner life of human sentimentality, Stonestreet stretches language and the reader’s expectations across the page. White space is a mind at work, parenthesis are interrogations, and prosody is the song of new life. This chapbook is must-read for anyone marching toward an

MEGAN MORIARTY From the Dictionary of Living Things FINISHING LINE PRESS 2014

Part dictionary, part guide to living, and part historical record of content, From the Dictionary of Living Things turns its own pages. It is a beautifully crafted and thought-provoking first collection from a poet at the beginnings of her career.

CEDAR SIGO Language Arts WAVE BOOKS 2014

Language Arts (Wave Books 2014) by Cedar Sigo is a departure and then reintroduction to form on avant garde’s terms. In addition to disparate explosions of imagery, Cedar trains the ear for surprise of sound and a prosody that was born of childhood prayer, exposure to native tongue, and an understanding of musical composition. You

KEVIN PRUFER Churches FOUR WAY BOOKS 2014

Kevin Prufer is a rare poet who manages to layer narratives and weave metrical variations seamlessly into his work, all while placing it on the page in an organic and “effortless” way. This is especially notable when we come to understand the process by which his poems are born; the disparate connections and glorious jumps,

VENUS THRASH The Fateful Apple URBAN POETS LYRICISTS 2014

To read Venus Thrashs The Fateful Apple (Urban Poets and Lyricists, 2014) is to venture into two assertions of self-hood. The first is a raucous, boundary-setting with the world and the second is reverent consciousness of ancestry and quietude. Thrash plays out her own duality of self and history and takes the reader on a

DAVID BIESPIEL Charming Gardeners UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS 2013

David Biespiels Charming Gardeners (University of Washington Press, 2013) is unlike any book Ive read in a long time. Filled with epistolary poems, his book despite being populated by the poets friends and family is actually a work of great loneliness. In many ways, Biespiels journey is Americas, where the road is both a symbol

MICHAEL ROBBINS Alien vs. Predator PENGUIN BOOKS 2012

Michael Robbins, author of Alien vs. Predator (Penguin Books, 2012), has gotten a lot of attention for his book of poems because of his relentless mashing together of pop-cultural references with literary and scholarly ones. Also, his ubiquitous use of rhyming was strangely considered noteworthy by poetry readers. Why has a mode of expression that

DANA GIOIA Pity the Beautiful GRAYWOLF PRESS 2012

Dana Gioias deference to poetic tradition and artistic beauty is intolerable to those who taste the venom of ideology in every linguistic expression of experience. But what ideology is present in the poets response to having lost a child? More broadly, what ideology is at play when our bodies find pleasure in the music of

LISA OLSTEIN Little Stranger COPPER CANYON PRESS 2013

In Little Stranger (Copper Canyon Press, 2013), Lisa Olstein’s poems are concerned with the tension between the public and the personal and how the former bullies its way into the latter. Olstein’s book is both provoked into existence and inspired by our contemporary moment. Its urgency makes sense when one sees Little Stranger as a

PAUL KILLEBREW Ethical Consciousness CANARIUM BOOKS, 2013

In Paul Killebrew’s latest book of poems, Ethical Consciousness (Canarium Books, 2013), the speaker inhabits the everyday structures of our lives, but responds to those structures in an entirely uncommon way. For Killebrew, his severe poetic lines (which he explains the origins of), once latched together create poems that act like tire-irons that the poet

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JOSHUA EDWARDS Imperial Nostalgias UGLY DUCKLING PRESSE 2013

Joshua Edwards new book and its title, Imperial Nostalgias (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2013), hint at a yearning for a lost world all of us helped to destroy or at the very least forgot. While tipping his hat to the social sciences throughout the book, Imperial Nostalgias is cunningly personal: each page is an intimate window

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LAUREN GORDON Fiddle is Flood BLOOD PUDDING PRESS 2015

In her macabre pastoral landscape Fiddle is Flood (Blood Pudding Press, 2015), Lauren Gordon conjures up a persona far-reaching enough to grapple with loss, grief, and the shock of intense change. But the poet does not hide behind the personal, instead she allows the speaker to become loss, become grief, and quake at the shock

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ELIZA GRISWOLD I am a Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan FARRAR STRAUS AND GIROUX 2014

In my dream, I am the president. When I awake, I am a beggar of the world. The landay represents an oral tradition of a mostly illiterate people. It is a dirge, a calling out to, that is specific to each woman who sings it. Even within the confines of an unwavering regime, life finds

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DAVID BIESPIEL Charming Gardeners UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS 2013

David Biespiels Charming Gardeners (University of Washington Press, 2013) is unlike any book Ive read in a long time. Filled with epistolary poems, his book despite being populated by the poets friends and family is actually a work of great loneliness. In many ways, Biespiels journey is Americas, where the road is both a symbol

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MARY RUEFLE Trances of the Blast WAVE BOOKS 2013

Mary Ruefle’s newest book of poems Trances of the Blast (Wave Books, 2013) is brilliant. Her poems have the confidence of a poet who is utterly fearless, but wise enough to never come out and brag about it. Her poetry is honest, but dignified, thoughtful and bizarre, and with a fidelity to lived experience that

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STEPHEN BURT Belmont GRAYWOLF PRESS 2013

Belmont (Graywolf Press, 2013) is a book of poems written by both a grownup and a child and each seem quite aware of the other. This split-consciousness, if you will, hangs around most of the poems, but not in a tense or obvious way, but from afar, after one has put the book down. Belmont

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DON SHARE Wishbone BLACK SPARROW 2012

Like great critics, the poetry of great editors is often overlooked, but I dont see how this can be the case with Don Share, whose work is too good to be ignored. A brilliant combination of the public and private, meshed together by a dark intuitive music, his poems brawl in ways that will startle

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JAMES LONGENBACH The Virtues of Poetry GRAYWOLF PRESS 2013

James Longenbachs The Virtues of Poetry (Graywolf Press, 2013) is not interested in the vices or failures found in some poems, so his concerns are not necessarily moral ones, but instead, as the title of the book suggests, he is interested in understanding what makes a particular poem (and poet for that matter) flourish, and

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JAMES FRANCO Directing Herbert White GRAYWOLF PRESS 2014

Every poet has their obsessions and for James Franco they are childhood, gender, sex, innocence, and the work place he knows best: the film industry. Within these poetic frames we’re introduced to various voices, landscapes nearly worn out with elegy, and a repertoire of imagery that is both tender and violent. Franco is our poet

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