The Clearing by Allison Adair reviewed by Chelsea Wagenaar
THE CLEARING Allison Adair Milkweed Editions, 2020 79 pages. $22, hardcover. Allison Adair’s The Clearing opens with two words that haunt the book: “What if.” The title poem, which initiates the collection, imagines, through familiar fairy tale imagery, that our lives unfold as stories wrought with these what ifs. What if this time instead of crumbs the girl
“Alias” by Eric Pankey reviewed by Mark Wagenaar
Alias Eric Pankey Free Verse Editions, Parlor Press 2020 Not to be confused with the television show of the same name, starring Jennifer Garner and beloved by Dwight Schrute, Alias is the second book of prose poems Eric Pankey has published with Free Verse Editions, by Parlor Press. One of the most crucial questions when reading such a volume
Donovan McAbee reviews Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry by John Murillo
John Murillo Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry 2020 Four Way Books $16.95 Paperback Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry, John Murillo’s second collection, is a particularly American lamentation, an extended meditation on loss: the inevitability of some losses, the tragic nature of others, and especially the political and existential crisis of loss inflicted on Black American selves and communities by our culture.
Sara Wainscott’s “Insecurity System” reviewed by Chelsea Wagenaar
Sara Wainscott Insecurity System 2020 Persea Books $15.95, paperback, 78 pages. Reviewed by Chelsea Wagenaar Insecurity System, Sara Wainscott’s debut collection, winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize, is a series of sonnets, structured loosely as a crown. The more I considered the way she plays with the sonnet form, especially the link between one poem’s
Miho Nonaka’s “The Museum of Small Bones” reviewed by Chelsea Wagenaar
Miho Nonaka The Museum of Small Bones. “2020” Ashland Poetry Press. $19.95, paperback. 82 pages. Reviewed by Chelsea Wagenaar “I dreamed of a power // to make small, imperceptible things / perceptible,” Nonaka writes in the title poem, “like the pattern of bones of a bat / in flight. The power to stave off our despair.” These lines
The Poetics of War: Three New Books on Armed Conflict and Armed Service reviewed by Mark Wagenaar
The Poetics of War: Three New Books on Armed Conflict and Armed Service Shrapnel Maps Philip Metres Copper Canyon Press 2020 At the heart of Philip Metres’ new book, Shrapnel Maps, is a series of wide-ranging sequences, “A Concordance of Leaves,” “Theater of Operations,” “Poster (“Visit”)
Chelsea Wagenaar reviews Paisley Rekdal’s “Nightingale”
In the opening poem of Nightingale, Paisley Rekdal writes, “The tree traffics / in a singular astonishment, its gold tongues / lolling out a song so rich and sweet, the notes / are left to rot upon the pavement.” The image of this tree in its cyclical transformation fuses many of the collection’s major themes: beauty, fecundity, violence, death. The
Mark Wagenaar reviews Mark Irwin’s “Shimmer”
Mark Irwin’s Shimmer Shimmer, the winner of the 2018 Phillip Levine Prize for Poetry, is Mark Irwin’s tenth volume of poetry, and follows 2017’s A Passion According to Green, and a selected volume from 2015, American Urn. Readers can comb through American Urn, and witness a fascinating evolution of a poet across half a dozen volumes. One of Irwin’s biggest
