Category Archives: reviews

bird scarer

Posted on August 28, 2008 by readingroom

“Poetry is not about making things happen,” claims poet-critic Donald Revell, “That’s what language does. Poetry is about making language happen.” The poems in Glenn Sheldon’s first full-length collection, The Bird Scarer, live up to this decree and then some; … Continue reading →

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the art of the poetic line

Posted on August 21, 2008 by readingroom

James Longenbach’s assertion in The Art of the Poetic Line that “the line’s function is sonic” (xi) is a rhetorical flourish, an exercise in creative overstatement intended to open eyes to a truth about poetry as much as to say … Continue reading →

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the blueing hours

Posted on August 20, 2008 by readingroom

Albert DeGenova’s The Blueing Hours moves from darkness to light –  the reader moves from passion to doubt to the struggle to survive intact – in a brilliantly structured book which carries the reader to dawn.  This isn’t surprising for … Continue reading →

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wild flight

Posted on August 9, 2008 by readingroom

“Upon Being Asked What I Believe In,” near the end of Christine Rhein’s Walt McDonald Prize winning Wild Flight, is a key to the whole collection. She begins with language: “I say, for starters, the word in, / the way … Continue reading →

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twenty poems to nourish your soul

Posted on August 7, 2008 by readingroom

In a literary market replete with mediocre inspirational verse, Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul is a celebration of the best spiritual writing, both prose and poetry. Anyone seeking the saccharine will be sadly disappointed. Judith Valente, a former Wall … Continue reading →

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famous last words

Posted on July 31, 2008 by readingroom

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 →

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the graves grow bigger between generations

Posted on July 31, 2008 by readingroom

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 →

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the way of the wind

Posted on July 30, 2008 by readingroom

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 →

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broken and reset

Posted on July 28, 2008 by readingroom

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 →

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all that road going

Posted on July 28, 2008 by readingroom

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 →

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