Poetry Archive
Pleasurable Disorientation in Lee Young-ju’s Cold Candies
The experience of reading Lee Young-ju’s collection is to find oneself suspended in an unfamiliar zone, and the disorientation is pleasurable.
Inheriting Trauma in How to Not Be Afraid of Everything
Jane Wong’s new poetry collection suggests that historical trauma does not evaporate between generations—its traces leak into the bones of the children, and even of the grandchildren . . . A triumph of formal ingenuity.
The Wilderness of Language in Atsuro Riley’s Heard-Hoard
In the collection, language, like nature, is elemental—a way of speaking and being in the world . . . Riley’s inventiveness is an invitation to notice language’s connection to the natural world.
Sandra Lim’s Rigorous Thinking in The Curious Thing
Sandra Lim is a poet whose straightforward yet daring intelligence demands a reader keep up. The poems in her third book evoke a mind constantly examining itself and the world it occupies.
Reinventing Loss in The Vault
Cerpa navigates the helplessness of trying to express what is inexpressible amid the cruel accrual of despair.
Curb’s Exploration of American Othering
Divya Victor’s new collection is a moving critique of the South Asian immigrant experience within post 9/11 America.
The Wild Fox of Yemen by Threa Almontaser
Almontaser’s collection espouses neither sentimental nostalgia nor doomed isolation . . . these poems are poignant and melancholic, sometimes tragic, sometimes hilarious, and always filled with beauty.
Popular Longing by Natalie Shapero
Natalie Shapero is an incisive social critic cutting through the smog of self-absorption and contradictions between what is said and done.
Fugitive Atlas by Khaled Mattawa
In poems that tenderly call us to action, Mattawa awakens readers to the human and geographical devastation wrought by the tendency to “other” people. Fugitive Atlas is a collaborative prayer for a shattered earth.
Little Big Bully by Heid E. Erdrich
Heid E. Erdrich’s new collection is more than a healing of past wounds. Rather, it is remarkable precisely because it posits the act of speaking as liberatory practice, a difficult action that will project us into a different and less abusive future together.