Poetry Archive
Three Chapbooks: Reinventing Prose Poetry for a New Century
While Nikki Wallschlaeger’s work resembles prose poetry more broadly, it uses spaces for its pacing, grammar, and syntax instead of punctuation. Angel Dominguez uses the form to write a series of letters, and Andrea Lawlor’s prose reads like a poetic manual for utopia.
Review: HARD CHILD by Natalie Shapero
These often dark and deeply personal poems are armored with comedic turns and allusions to our “rotting times.”
My Dress Hangs There: Three Chapbooks Addressing Femininity, Reviewed
These three poetry chapbooks address aspects of femininity, though a variety of other themes (sometimes related to femininity, other times by its side) abound in each—love, lust, heroism, art, to name a few.
Review: STOMACHS by Luna Miguel (Translated by Luis Silva)
There are times for sadness and severity and all things bleak, and what do we do then? Luna Miguel might not have solutions but Stomachs reminds us that melancholy is not always destructive.
Three Chapbook Reviews from the New-Generation African Poets (NNE) Box Set
The chapbook box set New-Generation African Poets, edited by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani, is the fifth of its kind, an annual project of the African Poetry Book Fund, produced by Akashic Books. The set consists of chapbooks by poets either living in Africa or of African heritage.
Review: LIKE THAT by Matthew Yeager
One hundred pages, six poems. A hand holding a small ball of foil reaches across the center of the cover, finger stretched, insistent or offering.
Review: ORBIT by Cynthia Zarin
The volume has its own points of gravity that, comet-like, it revisits as it moves forward.
Confession, Communion: Three Poetry Chapbooks & Religion
This month, I read work concerning religion in one way or another, though the chapbooks here are not dominated by or entrenched in it as a theme. Instead these three writers use religion and spirituality as a lens through which readers can view many aspects of their poetry.
The Anthem Lucinda Williams Slipped Right Under Our Noses
When Occupy Wall Street was at its height, I heard more than once the argument that the movement’s official song should be Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” (even the Financial Times called it the “ultimate anti-work anthem”). Parton’s lyrics—like “it’s a rich man’s game no matter what they call
Review: FAIL BETTER by Beyza Ozer
Fail Better is expansive, moving across great distances to share with readers wholly intimate moments, but it is not a book that could be called timeless. Two poems in particular, “When I Kiss You, A Casket Opens” and “I’ve Watched Myself Die Twice This Week,” compel readers to reckon