Recent Posts
Paradoxical Mourning in Edward Hirsch’s GABRIEL A POEM and STRANGER BY NIGHT
Paul Klee once said, “He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise.” There are poets whose language takes on this kind of inevitability, something Rilke called the “unconcealedness of being,” which shimmers on, star-like and unbidden, shouldering the pain of loss.
From MR CHANCE
in Australia a recent production of Merchant of Venice changed the ending –/ what have I done?
Four Poems
All my registers say hush/A spider pushes each ounce of knowledge against the ground/Her hydraulic soldiers
Heirlooms
My mother has a box. One day she will pass it down to me because mothers are supposed to give things to their daughters. But I don’t want it.
Review of VANISHING POINT: POEMS by William Trowbridge
From the Blakean embrace of the childhood imagination, to examining aging and death, to the profound undertone of uniting generations, William Trowbridge’s seventh collection, Vanishing Point, published by Red Hen Press in 2017, is a monumental testament to the circle of life in the twentieth century.
Two Poems
Take anything that stands beyond your ghostlike apparatus, / crenellated brain, the grasping neurons. / we might understand of understanding.
Review of OUR LANDS ARE NOT SO DIFFERENT & LONESOME GNOSIS
James Hoch reviews two new collections from Horsethief Books, Elizabeth Scanlon’s LONESOME GNOSIS, and Michael Bazzett’s OUR LANDS ARE NOT SO DIFFERENT
Yolanda
Yolanda, the security guard, sat in a tiny chair behind a school desk at the entrance of the rundown building on West 181st Street that served as headquarters for The District offices. An enormous woman with breasts the size of throw pillows straining the coarse blue fabric of her uniform, she wore her hair pulled up on top of her head in a tight bun; the style fit the determined expression carved into the cool black marble of her face. She hated her job, and probably was surly to everyone, but Mimi took it personally, because Mimi took everything personally.
Realpolitik
I thought talking politics with the manager at the Salt Cavern would be safe—I mean, salt therapy much? But, turns out, Gary had been held up when he worked as a liquor store cashier and had been backing gun rights legislation by way of NRA donations and bumper sticker activism ever since.
The Wonder
We’re sitting idle, another day of no skin, / no face up-turned. It’s not that rain streams us
Review of EVERYBODY’S SON by Thrity Umrigar
Can we ever escape the consequences of an immoral action, even if we think some good will come out of it? Thrity Umrigar, a prominent Indian-American writer, a professor, a journalist, and a Nieman Fellowship recipient, narrates a tale, Everybody’s Son, in which an immoral and illegal act changes lives and makes us wonder whether justice and atonement will follow.