Emmett Till in Different States Poems by Dr. Philip C. Kolin Third World Press, 2015 $18.95 A friend asked me the other day if I thought the world was ending. She was drowning in the constant-seeming reports of violence in the news, on college campuses, in the streets of major cities, violence so often targeting …
Why Is It So Hard To Kill You? by Barrett Warner Somondoco Press, 2015 $14.95 Warner’s collection opens with, “I Thought Pigeons were Vegetarians,” a meditation on (and critique of) the concept of monogamy as expressed through the image of doves and love birds. Warner challenges preconceptions of married life and normalcy, the sickly-sweet ideas we’re often …
Waitress at the Red Moon Pizzeria by Eleanor Levine Unsolicited Press, 2016 $16.00 I’ve known Eleanor Levine primarily as a fiction writer. Her stories are usually funny, high energy jaunts that read like bursts of insane joie de vivre, though they can be quite dark as well. I’ve also seen her read fiction, and it was …
Crow-Work Poems by Eric Pankey Milkweed Editions, 2015 $16.00 Pankey’s collection begins with the ominously titled, “Ash.” Ashes are inscrutable remains, something that shows that there was a previous form, but reveals little about that form. “At the threshold of the dive, how to know/but indirectly,” the poem begins, establishing this theme of inscrutability. Pankey …
Gospel of Dust Poems by Joseph Ross Main Street Rag, 2013 $15 There are a lot of people out there writing poetry, and most of it will be forgotten tomorrow, or maybe even later today. But just a handful of poets might be remembered. Joseph Ross should be one of those poets. Ross writes the …
The Philosopher’s Daughter Poems by Lori Desrosiers Salmon Poetry, 2013 €12.00 Lori Desrosiers first came to my attention as the editor of the Naugatuck River Review: A Journal of Narrative Poetry, a journal, similar to Rattle or Flint Hills, and many of the better, though lesser-known journals, that carry the torch of well-crafted poetry …
Proving Nothing to Anyone Poems by Matt Cook Publishing Genius Press, 2013 $14.95 Funny is hard. For some reason I’ve never understood, there’s a popular attitude that funny is somehow easier than serious, that comedy takes less skill to write than tragedy. I would say that they are equally difficult in many ways—both (when …
What Things Are Made Of Poems by Charles Harper Webb University of Pittsburgh Press: Pitt Poetry Series, 2013 $15.95 Webb’s title implies a certain amount of realism, an engineer’s approach, and his poems certainly follow through with this idea, though frequently with a philosophical bent. His weapon of choice is humor. The collection opens …