Habitation Collected Poems by Sam Hamill Lost Horse Press, 2014 $25.00 Sam Hamill has had a long and diverse career as a poet, publisher, editor, and translator—his work as a translator of poetry from ancient Chinese, Japanese, and Greek alone would place him in a rare arena of those who have contributed greatly to expanding …
River House Poems by Sally Keith Milkweed Editions, 2015 $16.00 In her fourth poetry collection, River House, Sally Keith straddles this world—oriented, logical, with the world of grief—timeless, aimless, consuming. All sixty-three poems are elegies to the speaker’s mother, even though she confesses “I used to like to teach a course on elegy, / But …
That Our Eyes Be Rigged Poems by Kristi Maxwell Saturnalia Books, 2014 $15.00 I always want to say falsetto to sing it true in falsetto. – “My Cost” Following its desire to play with and harness the strange power of words, Kristi Maxwell’s That Our Eyes Be Rigged seems to be a meditation on the …
Gia Cacalano has come a long way since her traditional Martha Graham training in New York City. Although she respects choreographed modern dance immensely, performing another artist’s rehearsed movement never felt comfortable to her. After quitting dance for seven years, Cacalano finally found the style that suits her best—improvisation. Over the last decade, she has …
Shape of the Sky by Shelagh Connor Shapiro Wind Ridge Books, 2014 $15.95 There’s music in the air in Shape of the Sky, the novel by Shelagh Connor Shapiro, out now from Wind Ridge Books. Music is central to this story of Resolute, Vermont—a tiny town, population 613. It’s one of those towns where everybody knows everybody, …
Poetry is risky business. All the time, I hear poetry teachers urging their students to take risks, and usually, what they mean, is write about “risky” subject matter. But what makes subject matter risky—writing about the body? Sorry folks, people have been doing that for years. Writing about drug use? Sexual assault? Running away from …
Sugar Run Road Poems by Ed Ochester Autumn House Press, 2015 $17.95 In his famous essay, “The American Background,” William Carlos Williams writes that America needs to create a “culture of immediate references.” Such a culture relies on direct, unmediated perception and contact with the American continent itself, free of European preconceptions and the “crazy …
When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain, Before high-piled books, in charact’ry Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain; When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace …