From Sorrow’s Well: The Poetry of Hayden Carruth edited by Shaun T. Griffin University of Michigan Press, 2015 $27.95 From Sorrow’s Well: The Poetry of Hayden Carruth edited by Shaun T. Griffin offers an interesting and fresh approach to literary criticism. Griffin defines four main personas of Hayden Carruth’s collected work—that is, Carruth as the Realist, …
Turning Japanese Graphic Memoir by MariNaomi 2D Cloud, 2016 $24.95 “The year was 1995 and I was twenty-two years old.” MariNaomi’s Turning Japanese begins with a breakup and ends with a homecoming. It’s a memoir that chronicles the protagonist’s personal evolution from job to job, from hemisphere to hemisphere. It’s a story that details MariNaomi’s …
Don’t Go Back to Sleep Poems by Timothy Liu Saturnalia, 2014 $15.00 Robert Pinsky, in his essay “Responsibilities of the Poet” says we must answer for what we see. What about what we can’t see? How do we answer for such things? In Don’t Go Back to Sleep we see Timothy Liu grapple with lasting …
The Republics Poems by Nathalie Handal University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015 $15.95 After the Haitian earthquake of 2008, the poet Nathalie Handal revisited the country of her birth and its neighbor, the Dominican Republic. Faced with two vibrant cultures learning how to resituate themselves after this latest tragedy, Handal began to write a series of …
Mothering Through the Darkness: Women Open Up About the Postpartum Experience Edited by Jessica Smock and Stephanie Sprenger She Writes Press, 2015 $16.95 Postpartum depression is the most common pregnancy-related complication with at least 1 in 7 new mothers mired in its dark water for months or even years, if left untreated. At least 1 …
Bright Dead Things Poems by Ada Limón Milkweed Editions $16.00 In 2010 a classmate handed me Limón’s first collection, lucky wreck, published by Autumn House Press, in the college dining hall. The classmate thumbed through the thin pages and pointed to her underline, the beginning of “First Lunch With Relative Stranger Mister You” which begins, …
Local Conditions Poems by Kristofer Collins Coleridge Street Books, 2015 $8.00 Kristofer Collins’ Local Conditions, published by Coleridge Street Books, is a chapbook rich with candid, often tender reflections on family; specifically conventional family roles of son, husband, and father depicted unconventionally. It also continues the poet’s penchant for composing meditations on place, particularly Pittsburgh—its …
Poems and Their Making: A Conversation Moderated by Philip Brady Etruscan Press, 2015 $23.95 Poems and Their Making: A Conversation isn’t the kind of book that you read through once and put away. In specific and individual ways, it is a peek inside the writing process of 31 accomplished poets. Whether a writer, reader, or …