Brawl & Jag by April Bernard W.W. Norton, 2016 $17.95 Reading April Bernard’s fourth book of poetry, Brawl & Jag, is like staring down the barrel of a gun. She writes about loss, despair, and anger with sharp-tongued wit and humor. Bernard’s language is not soft—her words bristle, pages upturned by grief. When it comes to relationships, …
A Blister of Stars by Jason Irwin Low Ghost Press, 2016 $8.00 Winner of the Transcontinental Poetry Award for Watering the Dead (Pavement Saw Press, 2008) and author of the chapbooks Where You Are (Night Ballet Press, 2014) and Some Days It’s a Love Story (Slipstream Press, 2005), Jason Irwin’s most recent collection, A Blister of …
The Canopy by Patricia Clark Terrapin Books, 2017 $16.00 I often found myself without breath while reading Patricia Clark’s new collection of poetry, The Canopy. The poems quietly knocked the wind out of me. The collection dwells in loss and the ways death can take things from us, both slowly and all at once. It characterizes the …
Rust Belt Boy: Stories of An American Childhood by Paul Hertneky Bauhan Publishing, 2016 $21.95 Paul Hertneky exemplifies Western Pennsylvanian familiarity in his new essay collection, Rust Belt Boy: Stories of an American Childhood. Hailing from a place known for its bullshitting, a gift explored in the essay, “Humility and Its Opposite,” Hertneky masters the craft …
The Loss of All Lost Things by Amina Gautier Elixir Press, 2016 $17.00 Not all loss is created equal. As I read Amina Gautier’s third collection of short stories, The Loss of All Lost Things (Elixir Press 2015), I tried to imagine the extent of loss I could endure. The loss of a child or partner …
The Silver Ghost by Chuck Kinder Braddock Avenue Books, 2016 $16.95 It is the late 1950s and America is a lush, electric, song-filled garden for teenage truelove, and Jimbo and Judy fully expect that their own truelove will grow and grow until the end of time, until the twelfth of never. Jimbo Stark lives in a …
Iconoscope: New and Selected Poems by Peter Oresick University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016 $16.95 It’s rare to find a poet with such a laser focus on creating a lifelong legacy. From Definitions in 1990 to Warhol-o-rama (2008) and anthologies like For a Living (1995), Oresick devoted his life’s work to making, fostering, inspiring, and highlighting art for, …
Bruja by Wendy C. Ortiz Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016 $15.95 Wendy C. Ortiz’s Bruja is a collection of dream vignettes that pull us into a moment of life that is often unseen, and even more so, unspoken. Each dream scene is written in language that is sharp, but not simple, as it shakes us awake to …