How to prepare for this collection? Pick your teeth with an axe after chewing on some freshly split ash. Carly Joy Miller is relentless. She doesn’t want you to breathe normally. Her lines resemble piano wire around the neck of a scary... Read More

That there’s such a stratospherically high level of difficulty in writing great poetry doesn’t get discussed much, probably out of superstition and a belief among poets that, after Homer’s singular brilliance, the gods disabled the... Read More

A young girl and boy marvel at the transformation of a single ordinary seed into an enormous tree in an amazing journey of imagination and possibilities inspired by the New Testament parable of the mustard seed. The whole park blossoms... Read More

Long stretches of hunger, sleep deprivation, filth, fear-filled nights under bridges, and the accompanying existential questions will leave a mark on a man, and his poetry. Kai Carlson-Wee lays it out there in this shy, wistful,... Read More

Curiosity skilled the poet. Seemingly unwilling to rein in her interests, Jen Town’s sense of wonder and delight with what catches her attention is infectious. Her work has lit up the pages of Epoch, Crab Orchard Review, Third Coast,... Read More

Good poets seem to recognize that what makes them good is what annoys them most about themselves. Damn the constant chatter—enough already!—but yes, admittedly, there’s some workable stuff in there. A masterful sifter, Tony... Read More

When Simon gets angry, he shouts and rages, and soon his temper takes the shape of a terrible lion, a rampaging rhino, and a dangerous dragon. With awesome, awful creatures at his back, Simon feels powerful—for a while, anyway. An... Read More

At its most basic, Rachel Marie Stone’s memoir, Birthing Hope: Giving Fear to the Light, is about the time she picked up a just-born baby with her bare hands, not realizing the mother was HIV positive, and the resulting process of... Read More