The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 Edited by Kevin Young and Michael S. Glaser Introduction by Toni Morrison BOA Editions, 2012 ISBN: 978-1934414903 More often than not, when BOA Editions sends me a book for review it comes in a modest package as it is commonly a small book—a single monograph of new poetry …
Animal Eye by Paisley Rekdal University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012 ISBN: 978-0822961796 Paisley Rekdal’s Animal Eye has been described as “pastoral” by a literary critic in the press release that came along with my review copy of the book, and while that’s a very good place to start with this volume it’s not an all-encompassing …
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 …
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 …
Windows & Stones: Poems by Tomas Tranströmer translations from the Swedish by May Swenson and Leif Sjöberg Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972; reprint, 2011 Tomas Tranströmer, with his reception of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2011, has gained something close to celebrity status in Europe and even the United States in the sense …