Devon Walker-Figueroa’s Philomath reviewed by Jeri Theriault
Philomath by Devon Walker-Figueroa Milkweed Editions paperback 104 pages ISBN: 978-1-57131-522-9 The poems in Philomath, Devon Walker-Figueroa’s 2021 National Poetry Series collection, evoke her origins in western Oregon, a landscape suggested in the cover art by Erik Larson, a stark woodcut of tree rings on a decayed stump. As she revisits the farmlands and vineyards of King’s
John Wall Barger’s “Resurrection Fail” reviewed by Cameron MacKenzie
John Wall Barger Resurrection Fail. New York Spuyten Duyvil 2021. 100 pgs. Director Michael Mann, when asked why he used digital cameras for his films, said that he preferred the technology because it enabled him to “see into the night.” It was the digital format, Mann insisted, that made the darkness feel most “alive.” I am often reminded
Robert Alexander’s “Finding Token Creek” reviewed by Sonia Greenfield
Finding Token Creek: New & Selected Writing, 1975-2020 Robert Alexander White Pine Press April 2021 ISBN: 978-1-945680-441 The Sacred and Mundane: A Review of Robert Alexander’s Finding Token Creek If the title of Robert Alexander’s New and Selected, Finding Token Creek, reminds you at all of Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, that would be apropos. Much as
Worldly Things by Michael Kleber-Diggs reviewed by Jane Zwart
Review of Worldly Things. Michael Kleber-Diggs. Milkweed. June 8, 2021. $22. Worldly Things is the name of Michael Kleber-Diggs’s first collection of poetry, and the phrase “worldly things” also gives one of the poems in the book its title. Preceding that poem, though, the writer shoulders the label himself. He writes: Our moment here is small. I
PETITION by Joyce Peseroff reviewed by DeWitt Henry
Carnegie Mellon University Press 2020 $15.95 78pp. paper ISBN 978-0-88748-861-6 Joyce Peseroff has been a personal friend since she served as Ploughshares’s poetry editor and managing editor. Her first collection, The Hardness Scale (1977), had just come out. She edited The Ploughshares Poetry Reader as well as her own issue, enlisted Donald Hall to guest edit and worked with
Favorite Books from 2020
Plume has a number of talented editors, and given the extraordinary year the world faced, I thought asking them for some of their favorite books of 2020 made sense, as a means of creating space for other voices and perspectives beyond mine and Chelsea’s, but also as a way to showcase more books than are typically possible in a “traditional”
