Sea Salt: Poems of a Decade, 2004-2014 Poems by David Mason Red Hen Press, 2014 $18.95 On a breezy evening in early April, Colorado’s Poet Laureate David Mason gave a reading from his latest collection, Sea Salt: Poems of a Decade, at Boulder’s Innisfree Bookstore and Café. During a question and answer session after the …
The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog Poems by Alicia Suskin Ostriker University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014 $15.95 “A very important thing is not to make up your mind that you are any one thing,” said Gertrude Stein. Alicia Suskin Ostriker borrows those words for the epigraph of her newest poetry collection The Old …
Bloom in Reverse Poems by Teresa Leo University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014 $15.95 One of Immanuel Kant’s philosophical musings stands as such: it is not how we bring ourselves to understand the world, but how the world comes to be understood by us. In the aftermath of a friend’s suicide, Teresa Leo’s speaker mourns, while …
Starlight Taxi Poems by Roy Bentley Lynx House Press, 2013 $15.95 “The hardest part is when someone tells you about America and defines promise as hope, and a love for the truth pushes you to give the raised middle finger to what you hear. The hardest part is living without hope.” – Roy Bentley, from …
Talisman Poems by Lisa C. Krueger Red Hen Press, 2014 $17.95 A few summers ago, the Saratoga Racing Tip Sheet on Lisa Krueger noted: “Goes a few places. Moves away from the obvious. Sometimes needs to look back over her shoulder to make sure the reader is following.” Big bettors may wish to read Krueger’s …
I have a low pleasure threshold. I suppose another way to say this would be that I’m easily amused, as if I were living my life as a playful cat. This winter I’ve especially enjoyed watching falling snow here from the condo’s windows when the air currents surrounding this building caused the flakes to …
Imperial Poems by George Bilgere University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014 $15.95 The world George Bilgere represents in his sixth collection, Imperial, tight-ropes the simple with the complex. Bilgere’s voice—casual, matter-of-fact, and vaguely amused—edges at the last second with anxiety and denial. His poems, an empire of “Yard Sale,” “Fly Balls,” “Prostate Exam,” simultaneously mix with …
Settling on the screen Of the crowded movie house, A white butterfly. — Richard Wright Thank you for that kind and generous introduction. I am really looking forward to meeting whomever it was you were talking about. I may well be the least likely poet in the world to give a lecture on composition. …