Janet Holmes, Book Reviewer

Book Review

Bearing Witness

by Janet Holmes

Teachers, those great observers of the young, are aware of the poetry people carry inside them. Therefore, it’s appropriate that the editor, a teacher herself, assembled this anthology of poems written by teachers about teaching.... Read More

Book Review

The Salt Hour

by Janet Holmes

Abundant with beaches, sails, and spray, these poems celebrate both the seductiveness and the destructive power of the sea, letting the fact of its unpredictability become a metaphor for human behavior. “The future has its limit, but... Read More

Book Review

Echolocations

by Janet Holmes

Thiel’s ear for meter is astute, and her skill at forms is attested to by prize after prize, not to mention two chapbooks from the formalist small press Aralia; her mainstream narrative voice is a natural for the aptly named Story Line... Read More

Book Review

Wild Sweet Notes

by Janet Holmes

“In West Virginia a good story takes awhile, / and if it has people in it, you have to swear / that it is true,” Maggie Anderson confides in “Long Story,” one of the hundreds of poems editors Smith and Judd—both West Virginia... Read More

Book Review

Brace's Cove

by Janet Holmes

A first poetry book by an author who has had numerous other careers (educator, political activist, editor of the New Republic), Brace’s Cove is not surprisingly retrospective, but Featherstone’s impulse is clearly lyric rather than... Read More

Book Review

Tell Me

by Janet Holmes

Addonizio’s tough-girl persona winds through the late-night bars, the abusive relationships, the strip joints, cigarettes, and discarded clothing of Tell Me with an exquisite world-weariness, and even the poems are crafted using the... Read More

Book Review

Cowboy Poetry Matters

by Janet Holmes

McDowell titles his collection with a straight face, and bolsters its contention with sobersided essays by Dana Gioia, Paul Zarzyski, Nancy McClelland and Kathy Ogren—but most people who pick up this book will want to let the poems... Read More

Book Review

Selected Poems Of Janet Lewis

by Janet Holmes

Lewis is best known as an historical novelist (The Wife of Martin Guerre), though her poetry has been highly esteemed by a later generation of twentieth century writers, most notably Philip Levine. Barth previously edited the poems of... Read More

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