Monthly Archives: July 2008

famous last words

The title of Catherine Pierce’s 2007 Saturnalia Book Prize winning collection points to the final short section of the book – a series of seven poems, each of which begins with last words attributed to a famous person, from Billy … Continue reading

Posted in reviews | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

the graves grow bigger between generations

I always approach a new book of poetry the way one wanders through a foreign city after arriving, weaving through narrow streets and alleys, jet-lagged and happy, enjoying the dreams. Only later do I pull out a map for directions. … Continue reading

Posted in reviews | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

the way of the wind

Ken Hada is unequivocally a poet of place, and his poetry is at its best when it clears a space where readers can dwell for a time in “the gypsum hills of northwest Oklahoma and the Ozarks of north Arkansas.” … Continue reading

Posted in reviews | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

broken and reset

The arrangement of Broken and Reset makes reading it something like visiting an archaeological excavation: while we don’t do the digging ourselves, we see evidence that it has been done. We stand on the rim of the dig and look … Continue reading

Posted in reviews | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

all that road going

In All That Road Going, A. G. Mojtabai takes the well-worn tradition of the American road novel and makes it new. By choosing a title and an epigraph from Jack Kerouac, she makes the connection with the tradition explicit. But … Continue reading

Posted in reviews | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

brotherkeeper and chasing the saints

Poetry and spirituality have long walked the same intellectual pathways, closely bonded cousins, if not quite fraternal twins. The Bible itself contains some of the world’s oldest, best- known poetry. Throughout the ages, great mystics like John of the Cross … Continue reading

Posted in reviews | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

painting the borrowed house

In Painting the Borrowed House, Kate Rogers celebrates place without standing still. We move with her poems from becoming lao wei (foreigner) to being at home in “thinking about where / I’ve been and where I’m going next” (60) –even … Continue reading

Posted in reviews | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

not exactly job

Nathan Brown’s Not Exactly Job stands in a long tradition of Biblical commentary that is at once conversation and poetry — poetry in conversation with poetry. Don’t be misled by my calling it “commentary.” It is not academic — and … Continue reading

Posted in reviews | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

miss moon’s class

The three sections of viki holmes’s miss moon’s class — writing, arithmetic, and reading — each begin with an epigraph that serves as a signpost of sorts for a segment of the journey. The first is taken from the Dresden … Continue reading

Posted in reviews | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

house of bone

“The house we bought clings to the edge / of the irrigation ditch,” writes Sheila Black in “Oasis,” the first poem in House of Bone. It’s an apt beginning to this collection, for the canal that feeds the garden is … Continue reading

Posted in reviews | Tagged , , | Leave a comment