Linda Andrews: “While the Rest of us Slept – Kathleen Flenniken’s Poetry of...
Plume Kathleen Flenniken University of Washington Press, 2012 – In the Fall of 2013, Kathleen Flenniken was awarded the Washington State Book Award for Plume. – Where I live, in eastern Washington...
View ArticleAmy Glynn: “This Is Your Captain Speaking – Mary Jo Salter’s Nothing by Design “
Nothing by Design Mary Jo Salter Knopf, 2013 – Twenty years ago, Mary Jo Salter published Sunday Skaters, a very fine collection of poems that touches on themes and ideas that longtime readers would be...
View ArticleNotable Books (NW) – Reviews of Mary Szybist, Robert Wrigley, Nance Van...
NOTABLE BOOKS (NW) – Fall-Winter 2014 The reviews included in this feature section were first published in our fall-winter 2014 print issue. Incarnadine, Mary Szybist (Graywolf Press, 2013) Readers...
View ArticleNotable Books – Reviews of Carol Light, Heather Christle, Hadara Bar-Nadav...
Heaven from Steam, Carol Light (Able Muse Press, 2013) Friendship is one of the conversant pleasures of a literary life, and has rarely been reason (historically, at least) not to offer words of...
View ArticleAfterwords // Notes on Rae Armantrout’s Poem “Thrown”
By Scott Condon | Contributing Writer The title of Rae Armantrout’s poem “Thrown” immediately brings to mind philosopher Martin Heidegger’s notion that human life is thrown into the world. This concept...
View ArticleMegan Snyder-Camp: “’why / put me in charge’– Ellen Bryant Voigt’s Headwaters”
Headwaters Ellen Bryant Voigt Norton, 2013 – In Headwaters, Ellen Bryant Voigt has composed a volume of poems entirely free of punctuation, an approach in part responding to, as she notes in a 2013...
View ArticleWSBA Poetry Finalists: 7 Word Reviews
by Kevin Craft Ed Skoog, Rough Day: Every rough day has its dogged song. Familial ruminations cut to the quicksand tongue. Sample line: “deranged and precise as the Grand Canyon” Sherman Alexie, What...
View ArticleDavid Rigsbee: “Still Cool – Re-reading Kizer’s Collected“
Cool, Calm & Collected: Poems 1960-2000 Carolyn Kizer Copper Canyon Press, 2001 When Kizer’s Cool, Calm and Collected: Poems 1960–2000 (Copper Canyon Press, 2001) weighed in at a whopping 400...
View ArticleJustin Boening: “How To Live With Almost Nothing – Ed Skoog’s Rough Day“
Rough Day Ed Skoog Copper Canyon Press, 2013 “Poetry is how to live with almost nothing,” proclaims the speaker of Ed Skoog’s wildly expansive yet personal and grief-filled second book of poetry, Rough...
View ArticleJeff Hardin: “In Cultivation, Verity – Amy Glynn’s A Modern Herbal“
A Modern Herbal Amy Glynn Measure Press, 2013 – The poems in Amy Glynn’s A Modern Herbal are abundant, full of “hedonistic languor,” and elegant in design. They are voluptuous and fecund, hungry and...
View ArticleShin Yu Pai: “Grace Notes – Carol Levin’s Confident Music Would Fly Us to...
Confident Music Would Fly Us To Paradise Carol Levin MoonPath Press, 2014 For 20 years, poet Carol Levin worked with Seattle Opera as one of the company’s supernumeraries, a non-speaking role in the...
View ArticleKristen Steenbeeke: “‘You want your dream masts to rise’– Emily Kendal Frey’s...
Sorrow Arrow Emily Kendal Frey Octopus Books — EKF: “… as I grow less and less interested in the mind, insofar as making “sense” (at least along any lines of logic) of my experience, the more willing...
View ArticleGreg Bem: The Body Politic – Brian Foley’s The Constitution
The Constitution Brian Foley Black Ocean, 2013 — “As soon as we finish we want to be understood again.” (from “Amendment”, p. 10) The Constitution is a book of lessons, a book of learning how to become...
View ArticleKaren An-hwei Lee: “The Literal Heart – Kim-An Lieberman’s In Orbit”
In Orbit Kim-An Lieberman Blue Begonia Press 2014 – Yes, this is a brave and luminous volume about living with – then dying – from cancer. In Orbit does not, however, follow an orthodox trajectory –...
View ArticleBill Carty: “Working its Own Salvation: Dan Beachy-Quick’s A Brighter Word...
A Brighter Word Than Bright Dan Beachy-Quick University of Iowa Press, 2013 — In a rejected preface to his long poem Endymion, John Keats—apparently not having internalized the workshop admonition “no...
View ArticleBillie Swift: “Dear viscera, – Kelly Davio’s Burn This House”
Burn This House Kelly Davio Red Hen Press, 2013 — Burn This House, Kelly Davio’s debut poetry collection, is peppered with visceral images so precise they evoke poetic contemplation during even the...
View ArticleRich Smith: “Ordering A Skinny, Sugar-free Vanilla Latte on the Cusp of...
Bugle Tod Marshall Canarium, 2014 All of our friends are dying or dead and the world is melting, but that doesn’t mean you have to give up on jokes and poetry and a general sense of wonder, right? In...
View ArticleLaura Eve Engel: “Who Will Speak for This Flesh”– Roger Reeves’ King Me
King Me Roger Reeves Copper Canyon Press, 2013 Few words locate us in a speaker’s experience more immediately than the first three of Roger Reeves’ debut collection: “I, Roger Reeves…” As if taking up...
View Article“Beautiful Evidence – Vispo and Videotape”
The Last Vispo Anthology: Visual Poetry 1998-2008 Nico Vassilakis & Crag Hill, editors Fantagraphics, 2012 In her essay “Broken English,” Heather McHugh explores the role of fragment in poetry,...
View ArticleDavid Thacker: “My Spinnerets are Honest”– Kimberly Johnson’s Uncommon Prayer
Uncommon Prayer Kimberly Johnson Persea, 2014 Uncommon Prayer, Kimberly Johnson’s third book of poems, is a book of transition in the deepest sense. Johnson’s first two collections, Leviathan with a...
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