Review: Staying Alive by Laura Sims
Laura Sims Staying Alive $12.00 Ugly Duckling Presse Laura Sims’s fourth collection of poetry, Staying Alive (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2016) enters the conversation of dystopian literature with a challenging meditation on the language of collapse and resilience. Staying Alive is composed of three sections and an afterword, beginning in eerie abstraction after the action of apocalypse has begun. At the reader’s arrival, we find already “The red glow from the East the burning dock
Chapbook Review: Mammoth by Rachel McKibbens
Rachel McKibbens Mammoth $10.00 Organic Weapon Arts Rachel McKibbens, noted slam poet, activist, and the author of two books of poetry, presents a compelling series of poems on grief in Mammoth, a beautiful chapbook from Organic Weapon Arts. Mammoth approaches all of its subjects—the death of a young niece, the prevalence of loss—with a candor that renders each look wrenching. The chapbook loosely traces the development of the niece’s illness, from the diaper-change discover
Review: Silent Anatomies by Monica Ong
Monica Ong Silent Anatomies $17.95 Kore Press Monica Ong’s Silent Anatomies, winner of the 2014 Kore First Book Prize, is an exciting foray into archival memory and translation. Ong, a poet and artist, uses image and text in innovative collaboration in a book that illuminates experiences of gender, migration, and language in consistently surprising forms. One of the most striking features of this work is Ong’s use of digitally collaged images, in which text is superimposed ov
Chapbook Review: Absence of Stars by Nicole Rollender
Nicole Rollender Absence of Stars $7.00 dancing girl press In the 13 poems within Nicole Rollender's chapbook Absence of Stars (dancing girl press, 2015),“A hummingbird’s skeleton opens my hands / like a flower.” This chapbook is filled with flowers and bones, flight toward the light and falling down onto the ground, tiny and helpless. The beginning of the collection is inspired by the early birth of a tiny baby, a living life form that emerged from the womb too soon, a new
Review: The Apocalyptic Visions of Natalie Diaz: When My Brother was an Aztec
Natalie Diaz
When My Brother Was an Aztec
Copper Canyon Press, 2012
103 pages, $16.00 “And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers” – Ezekiel 25:17 What can you do when the world breaks apart? Turn to Natalie Diaz and her debut poetry collection When My Brother was an Aztec, perhaps the most anguished, eloquent, mournful document emerging from American poetry in the past quarter century. W
Chapbook Review: Cecilia Woloch's Earth
Cecilia Woloch
Earth
Two Sylvias Press, 2015
46 pages, $9.90 In Earth, winner of the 2014 Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize, Cecilia Woloch focuses on the major movements of life—across continents, between childhood and adulthood, and from life to death—in compelling poems that allow each transition its full measure of significance in a network of shifting pieces. What I appreciate most about these poems is that they are not in a rush. Woloch develops each character, each fa
(Micro)Chapbook (Micro)Review: Jonterri Gadson's Interruptions
Jonterri Gadson
Interruptions
MIEL, 2014
Dimensions: 10cm square (cover), 9cm square (text)
Binding: staple
12 pages, €5.00 Jonterri Gadson’s Interruptions is the second book in MIEL’s microseries of tiny books—at 10x10cm, about the size of a coaster. What Gadson achieves in this miniature space, however, is quite remarkable; MIEL’s goal of publishing “difficult, interesting, intelligent, deeply felt” work is clearly realized here in three poems that press the brevity of
Chapbook Review: Sarah Certa's Juliet (I)
Sarah Certa
Juliet (I)
H_NGM_N, 2014
portable document format, free If you haven’t had a chance to check out H_NGM_N’s digital chapbook series, may I heartily recommend that you do so. The press is publishing 6 chaps per year in free, downloadable pdf format, which is an amazing opportunity to read fresh work regularly. The most recent release (Dec. 2014) is a new chap by H_NGM_N’s Associate Poetry Editor Sarah Certa, who has a full length collection, NOTHING TO DO WITH ME (
Chapbook Review: Ashley Toliver's Ideal Machine
Ashley Toliver
Ideal Machine
Poor Claudia, 2014
Hand sewn, $10 What I actually want to tell you is that I like this book. You should buy it and read it. The poems are beautifully made and surprising. The sequence includes illustrations that complement the poems' image-making. The whole thing makes me feel feelings. But in case my personal recommendation doesn’t carry much weight and you want to know a little more about the book, it seems only fair to tell you that, too.
Chapbook Review: Khadijah Queen's "I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had O
Khadijah Queen
I’m So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On
Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013
Digital Chapbook, $3.00
18 pages Khadijah Queen, author of the full-length collections Conduit (Black Goat/Akashic 2008) and Black Peculiar (Noemi 2010), has a new digital chapbook available for download from Sibling Rivalry Press: I’m So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On. The chap opens with the following directive: “This is a work of fiction.” More specifically, it is a
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