Beckman and Zapruder have tackled perhaps the largest taboo in American letters: the political poem. This genre is often dismissed as didactic or worse, un-poetic, but "State of the Union" proves just how good political poems can be.... Read More

It is always a pleasure to read a writer’s debut novel and Rebecca T. Urrutia’s "Past Becomes Present" is no exception. A love story with a science-fiction slant "Past Becomes Present" is entertaining regardless of clichéd phrases... Read More

Kayla the Koala Bear is front and center in this book’s title but she is by no means the star of the story. From the title and cover illustration this appears to be a book about a koala bear living in its natural habitat but it is... Read More

The self-guided journey from poverty to prosperity is a familiar one in the genre of memoir. While some people who are born into despair and oppression remain downtrodden their whole lives others rise above the fray and beat the odds to... Read More

Sidney Wade could easily be speaking of herself when she writes about a turtle that “precisely / balances her load / of hungry bone on / four dactylic feet.” These lines end the poem “Tortoise” from Wade’s latest book, Stroke,... Read More

When her Uncle Don said she ought to write a book about him, Terese Svoboda was skeptical. A published poet and novelist, Svoboda knew how tricky the publishing world could be, and her uncle’s story didn’t look promising at first... Read More

In Upton’s fifth book of poetry, she returns to tableaus in history, both mythical and actual. She pictures Emily Dickinson with blossoms in her hands, Dido standing before the burning pyre at Carthage; even lines from Shakespeare... Read More

“I’m entering time, taking the time of the terrain, entering the tempest of the broken temblor in its strip of sundowns and I enter, torpid turf of pasture, stubborn stair with its child’s opening that accelerates feet,” the... Read More