Teeth and Breadcrumbs: A Review of THE CLEARING by Allison Adair
The opening title poem of Allison Adair’s collection The Clearing transforms a recognizable fairy tale into a grim story of a man who may be a “prince or woodcutter or brother, now musty with beard,” all familiar tropes of the genre, and who collects teeth that the girl in the story has dropped instead of breadcrumbs.
The Social Distance Reading Series
Recent Posts
Devotion and Defiance: A Review of Leila Chatti’s DELUGE
In this stunning debut collection of poetry, Leila Chatti, a citizen of both the United States and Tunisia, brings together a variety of topics that, historically, have not oft been talked about—not in public and not in poems—and when they have arisen, they have often come bearing shame.
A Review of PARTURITION by Heather Treseler
Heather Treseler’s new chapbook Parturition, named after the technical term for childbirth, is punctuated with medical vocabulary. Anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure. Caul, a baby born with a piece of amniotic sac on its head. Nullipara, a woman who has never given birth.
Girl Twirling
You orbit around a young star/In a rocket you travel to a pink planet/Fifty-seven light years from Earth
A Review of SUMMER SOLSTICE by Nina MacLaughlin
“What’s the start of summer for you, the signal that it’s here?” Nina MacLaughlin asks in her book-length essay Summer Solstice, published by Black Sparrow Press. And with that invitation the reader’s imagination is kindled, fueled by the flush of inquiries that follow: “Is it the last day of school? The lilacs or the day lilies? First sleep with the windows open?”
Three Poems
We leaned back/in the planetarium/seats, looking up/into the dark–/a father and his/two sons. We heard/what could have been
Our Chernobyl
From my window, I look out at Montpelier’s empty streets, trying to tune out the COVID-19 news updates that ping and bing on my phone, asking myself why this all feels so eerily familiar. I know this jumble of emotions. Fear, helplessness, despair, and also the sense that we’re all in this together.
Surrealism as a Mode of Memory and Instruction in THE FIRE EATER
Surrealism is a flight against Oblivion. Taking to the winds of Memory on the magical wings of the supra-real. Reality through an extraordinary idea of Reality. What creates memory and what creates forgetfulness, surrealism asks us to ask ourselves.
Freight
Your anger arrives on the back of a train/Arrives in my yard. The neighbor’s grass too long, and the city getting interested
Scissors of the Air
A visit to the hair salon every seven or eight weeks for me is the emotional equivalent of attending a high school reunion, the kind where two popular girls, naturally both cheerleaders, rush you in the restroom line, singsong, “Are you married yet? We didn’t think so,” and whizz off in a confetti of giggles.