Review: Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World by Pádraig Ó’Tuama
Poetry Unbound: 50 Poem to Open Your World by Pádraig Ó’Tuama. W.W. Norton & Company. 384 pages. $22.99, hardcover. On Being Studio’s podcast Poetry Unbound, hosted by Pádraig Ó’Tuama and first broadcast early in 2020, sets a high bar for all poetry media. It is gently-voiced, ceaselessly generous in its readings, and effortlessly vulnerable. Ó’Tuama’s...
Poetry Review: Chopping Wood in the Moonlight by Ken Letko
Chopping Wood in the Moonlight by Ken Letko. Flowstone Press. 2021. 33 Pages. Paperback. Chopping Wood in the Moonlight is Ken Letko’s tribute to nature and simple living. In these tightly crafted poems, the author utilizes his years of traveling and collected wisdom to celebrate a life lived authentically. In the title poem, Letko invokes the ancient Chinese...
Poetry Review: The Track the Whales Make by Marjorie Saiser
The Track the Whales Make: New and Selected Poems by Marjorie Saiser. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2021. 181 pages. $19.95, print. The Track the Whales Make begins with a section of new work and then features poems from Saiser’s seven previous books, starting with the most recent and then moving backwards in time. Like Saiser’s poems themselves, the book’s construction creates a sense of what is fleeting. As the...
Poetry Review: Unholy Heart by Grace Bauer
Unholy Heart: New and Selected Poems by Grace Bauer. The Backwaters Press: An Imprint of the University of Nebraska Press. 2021. 169 pages. $19.95. Paperback. New and selected poetry collections can sometimes be cumbersome when approaching any poet to experience their work. I always find that’s because we must figure out where to begin. With Unholy Heart: New and Selected Poems by Grace Bauer, it’s...
Fiction Review: Hoaxes and Other Stories
Hoaxes and Other Stories by Brian Dinuzzo. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2022. 161 pages. $17.95, paperback. Right away, this book pulled me in. The titular Hoax, the leading story of the collection by Dinuzzo, is about a budding actor who keeps dying, found the victim of a number of terrible accidents, though each one reported...
Book Review: I Know What’s Best for You: Stories on Reproductive Freedom
I Know What’s Best for You: Stories on Reproductive Freedom, edited by Shelly Oria. San Francisco, California: McSweeney’s, 2022. 480 pages. $21.99, paperback. In the months since SCOTUS’s overturning of Roe v. Wade it’s been incredibly difficult to feel like the voices of women and gender minorities are being listened to. While it’s easy to...
Chapbook Review: All Small Planes
All Small Planes by Eric Roy. Whitman, Massachusetts: Lily Poetry Review, 2021. 19 pages. $12.00, paperback. Eric Roy begins All Small Planes with a statistic: 72,000 opioid deaths in America in 2017, which comes to 197 daily deaths, an death toll equivalent to a 737 jet fatally crashing every single day. But Roy’s collection doesn’t...
Poetry Review: Traveling With the Ghosts
Traveling With the Ghosts by Stella Vinitchi Radulescu. Asheville, North Carolina: Orison Books, 2021. 107 pages. $16.00, paperback. invocation by Stella Vinitchi Radulescu those eyes you love the violet eyes of Spring the girl descending the hill or Spring itself in violent wind— let me clean the air with a vowel...