For this author, the poet’s vocation is brutal, as knuckle-bloodying as any street fight. Consequently, the poems of his latest work are often chock-full of bravado, but in the end, the speaker admits his powerlessness: Why can’t the... Read More

Between Mitchell, South Dakota with its corn palace, and Halifax, Vermont, the “spiritual center of the universe,” in a dingy bar beside a forgotten highway, one could easily find this poet busy scribbling another postcard from the... Read More

This poet’s literary past is impressive. Her books have been nominated for the Pulitzer, an ALA Best Book of the Year Award, and the first Pura Belpré medal by REFORMA, the Spanish-language arm of the ALA. Ortiz Cofer crosses genres,... Read More

This poet gets right to the point in her latest collection. The first poem begins, “I am translating the world,” an ambitious goal, to say the least, but also an ars poetica applicable to most poets. And lest any reader have the... Read More

As two boys search for the source of the water that ordinarily flows through their yards they learn about more than water. Asad and Samad discover that nobody is all good or all bad. Asad and Samad live in Tajikistan. They enjoy wading... Read More

Fence Books tends towards the avant-garde, the young, the hip, and this collection of poems fits into the niche well. Huffman’s poems resist traditional narrative meaning, relying instead on the power of nuance, juxtaposition, and... Read More

As early as the 1600s, horse owners in England and Ireland raced each other across open country using a distant church as a goal post. This tradition that became known as the steeplechase, is one of many facts explained in this book... Read More

“From / the farm you wrote: when I used to live in the Mountains. / Used is one word that makes me tired. It is almost like lying / down,” writes the author. In her verse, Ackerson-Kiely demonstrates, as in her poem “On the Gentle... Read More