Poet in Andalucía by Nathalie Handal University of Pittsburgh Press 2012 The concept of a volume of poetry transporting its reader to a far-off locale is not a new one. Given the constant tropes of how poetry is supposedly an emotional, romantic, art, the idea of remote vistas and escape almost too-easily fits into the …
To read Peter Blair’s Farang is to find oneself in a lucid dream. Set in Thailand and wavering between Bangkok, the “Up-country” and Pittsburgh, Blair’s language moves readers through scenes with the elegance of a foreign dancer: the rhythms are mesmerizing, the experience transcendent. Having spent three years in Thailand in the Peace Corps, Blair …
I belong to a Poet’s Club (as we have chosen to call ourselves, and which I have written about here before.) Each time we meet, the host-poet hands out a writing assignment for the next time; our most recent assignment was a haibun. Haibun is traditionally a prose/haiku set having to do with travel. American …
Pittsburgh: Autumn House Press, 2012 ISBN: 978-1932870596 112 pages Ruth Schwartz’s new book of poems starts off with a quote on poetry as an art by Pablo Neruda and this seems like a most-apt and fitting introit to the poetry that follows. Schwartz, as well as being an established and accomplished poet, is a psychologist …
The Book of Ten by Susan Wood University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011 Susan Wood brings us this new collection of her poems and a steadfast intent to write with courage of history and contemporary American life. She is able—adept, even—to make things mundane seem complex and worthy of her pen while in due contrast illuminating …
True Faith: Poems Ira Sadoff BOA Editions. 2012 In Ira Sadoff’s new book of poetry, the title poem starts “true faith belongs to the truly unstable”, and from there, it’s a rolling ride through the American landscape, language, the questions of faith and what that word “faith” even means. Sadoff, a veteran American poet of …
Breaths Poems by Eleuterio Santiago-Díaz with prints by Yoshiko Shimano Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press 2012 A difficult yet rewarding book, this. Breaths, I will simply state at the onset, was a difficult book to read and review. Not “difficult” in the sense that the poetry was obtuse, long, or overtly complex—as is, in …
Closer by Christopher Soden QUEERMOJO/A Rebel Sartori Imprint, 2011 ISBN 978-1-60864-045-4 Closer, Christopher Soden’s first full length poetry collection, published by Queermojo/Rebel Sartori Press, is a rich and provocative collection that circles and re-circles human experience, honing in on sex, love, self, loss, memory, regret, and place. Soden’s voice is expansive–in turn pensive, tender, vehement, …