Is it possible that a poet writes in order to perplex a reader? To ask questions, or tell stories, without necessarily sorting it out for him or herself? It seems that this author operates, at least in part, with these tensions bubbling... Read More

Perhaps a borrowed dress could free a person “to become what I loved, fly // into the stunned landscape where clouds unfold their longings to be lakes and lakes hold clouds in their mouths / as briefly as smoke.” This first... Read More

In this poetic memoir, the author seeks to find the source of her daughter’s mental illness through the vehicle of lineage. Writing through three generations of family history, she assumes the voice of her parents, her daughter, and... Read More

The necessary kindling is what ignites, and in the title poem it begins this way: “when she awakens, / she remembers / the shape of her own breath, / pressing it / into the heart of her words.” So, like all first words, this... Read More

To the outsider, war means decisive troop movements, big battles, and death from field injuries. While Surgeon William M. Smith observed all of these, his diary also bears witness to confused troop movement, death by preventable... Read More

The “circumference” of the title remains ambiguous in its application to this rewarding anthology. Twenty-eight contemporary poets responded to the editor’s request that they investigate the “idea of mastery” in a short essay,... Read More

If childhood memoirs praising the pleasures of family, security, and comfort are rare, then rarer still is the memoir that credits those tender memories with inspiring a creative life. With clear-eyed wonderment, Gingher revisits her... Read More

Many books on creativity cite examples from the lives of Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison, Walt Disney, and other famous persons. Levesque contends that everyone is creative in different ways. The goal of her book is to provide a process... Read More