The Devil’s Snake Curve by Josh Ostergaard Coffee House Press, 2014 $16.00 At first glance, former urban anthropologist Josh Ostergaard has written a love story. There’s nostalgia, great passion, cheating, impenetrable beauty, and remorse. There’s reunion, resignation, and heroic angels. And lots of hot dogs. Ostergaard comfortably puts down six in a nine inning span. …
The Earth Avails Poems by Mark Wunderlich Graywolf Press, 2014 $15.00 God appears to be making a comeback. Six months ago Flannery O’Connor’s spiritual journal was unveiled in The New Yorker. The break came on the heels of former child evangelist Terry Lucas’ If They Have Ears to Hear (Southeast Missouri State University Press), and …
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 …
Girl at the Watershed Poems by Nicola Waldron Stepping Stone Press $12 You’d expect a little vertigo from a poet who migrated from the berries and cream at Cambridge to the red eye gravy of South Carolina. The speaker in Nicola Waldron’s poems in Girl at the Watershed is ever on the move, but even …
Drift Poems by Alan King Willow Books, 2012 $15.00 The acknowledgments page is standing room only in Alan King’s debut collection of poems, Drift. In fact it’s two pages long, which might say a lot about King’s gratitude, but climbing aboard these poems (each one is a train car) the first thing I noticed …
Night Moves by Stephanie Barber Publishing Genius Press, 2013 $10.00 We’re a nation of critics and deciders—folks hired for their opinions rather than physical labor. One of the pleasures of nonobjective painting is that the role of the critic in defining contemporary art becomes obsolete. The artist—photographer Linda Conner in the Seventies, or painter …
Puerto Rico By Alejandro Ventura Brooklyn Arts Press, 60 pages, $15 ISBN-13: 978-1-936767-15-1 When it comes to oceanic feelings, novelists reach for fishing poles and poets reach for binoculars. Being the latter, I’ve spent my life trying to find a pile of dirt in the high seas. I want to build a fire on it. …
Big Ray By Michael Kimball Bloomsbury, 185 pages, $23, ISBN: 978-1-60819-854-2 Most metaphors weigh a few ounces. Big Ray weighs five hundred pounds. He isn’t the sort of metaphor that fits through a window. Think grand piano. And we’re talking dead weight, not live weight, so right away we know that all of Michael Kimball’s …