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Highland Park Poetry began in 2007. Wow! Amazing! Together with the support of friends and followers, we have created poetry opportunities, experiments, publications, contests, readings, open-mics, pentathlons, and more to bring poetry to the community and beyond the 60035 zip code. Thanks to everyone who has contributed time, energy, talent and cash to this endeavor. Here's to many more years of celebrating words in poetry!Thanks to Highland Park Poetry's contributors in 2025 & 2026:
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Before I Lie by Dralandra Larkins
Book Baby, 2025 212 pages
ISBN: 979-8218695019
Review by jacob erin-cilberto
In the first poem of this book, “The Trial,” Larkins foreshadows what we might anticipate from her poetry. She introduces herself with these words:
“You’ll find me on these pages--- Undoing cycles sewn in my blood. Un-silencing my name. Exhaling what would’ve killed me silent. These poems aren’t just art. They’re evidence.”
With her next breath, Dralandra gives us her name in the poem titled “Dralandra.”
“My name has no official or traditional meaning And that means names like mine get stereotyped--- ‘ghetto, ridiculous---absurd.’ But my name is a Melody---”
She is proud of her name, proud of her heritage. I relate to this as my grandfather’s last name was Cilberto. He came over from Sicily as a young orphan of about ten years. When naturalized, his name was changed to the more American sounding Gilbert. I love Cilberto and would ask my dad why he never changed our name back to that. Such is the name game when it comes to playing it safe and avoiding stereotypes. Dralandra asks the reader this question. “Has culture caught ya tongue?”
In her poem “Black Sheep,” she writes:
“They called me different--- as if it were something to fix. As if standing apart Meant I was torn.”
Again, she is told to blend in, acquiesce from who she really is. And again, she refuses:
“I was told to Smile politely fold yourself smaller and fit in the frame I spoke in my own language And they called it noise. But I wasn’t too much. They were just too afraid to stand beside a woman on full volume!”
Larkins is on “full volume” throughout this masterful book of verse. She lays claim:
“This face? It doesn’t flinch anymore. It testifies.”
Dralandra, in “Holy Note,” tells us that
“God didn’t draft you. Didn’t sketch you in pencil, You were inked with purpose.”
Yes, this poet obviously was inked with purpose. She was meant to write, meant to be a voice for her people, for all women who have no voice yet but need to find one, one that is strong, defiant, independent.
The poet reinforces this notion:
“she taught me How to deaf out what doesn’t serve me, to silence what harms, and amplify what heals. To listen--- Only to freedom and turn up the volume on my power.”
One must be so impressed with the strong, yet gentle voice of this poet. Defiance? Yes. Strength? Yes. But anger? Hardly. Thes poems are not about retaliation but more about resilience and identity.
“My mother could raise a child, raise her voice, and raise hell. But my mama didn’t raise no fool Didn’t raise no punk, She raised a flame a lover and a fighter, A poet--- Who might just be a problem.”
She is a poet with loud volume, a poet to be heard, who once is heard can never be un-heard.
In Dralandra’s poem, “When Hip-Hop Raised Me Wrong---I Loved Her Anyway,” she writes:
“Even when he beat women into punchlines--- turned our bodies into metaphors But I wasn’t trap rap I was poetry--- Rhythm and resistance they couldn’t name.”
This reminds us of what she already told us in an earlier poem, “My name is a melody.”Larkins shows a loving, tender side when she writes:
“Even love glistens in darkness … They lie still --- Bare, In one another’s nature … Just pillow thoughts Unspoken. Just skin Only breath Just them.”
At three-quarters of a century old, I have experienced plenty of joy but also plenty of pain in relationships and my motto is like what she says in a poem, “Heart guarded, / but never hardened.” Larkin goes on to say, “Your trauma is not your inheritance. / Leave what haunts.”
In “To My Younger Self Who Just Needed Joy,” she tells herself:
“Baby girl one day the world will clap for you--- and you won’t have to prove yourself to earn it.”
This reviewer is still clapping and must admit this review has not been so easy to write. The reason is that I always try to include some of the best lines from the book to showcase the writing prowess of the poet. But picking those lines from this poet’s work is difficult because I could have found myself rewriting the entire book. Dralandra Larkins showers us with talent to which we react with some sadness, some smiles and much applause.
In “The Verdict” she writes:
“I set fire To the lies I wore like lipstick. Verity blistered into ember, Hot enough to unseal the part of me I forgot to speak into flame. I echoed confessions, Across the courtroom of the cosmos Put silence on trial.”
Dralandra surely does “put silence/ on trial.” And lucky for us, she has done just that.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: jacob erin-cilberto is author of 26 books of poetry, his most recent being A Jersey Shore in Ryegate. He teaches at John Logan College and conducts workshops at Heartland Writers Guild, Southern Illinois Writers Guild and Union County Writers Guild. Posted February 1, 2026
“You’ll find me on these pages--- Undoing cycles sewn in my blood. Un-silencing my name. Exhaling what would’ve killed me silent. These poems aren’t just art. They’re evidence.”
With her next breath, Dralandra gives us her name in the poem titled “Dralandra.”
“My name has no official or traditional meaning And that means names like mine get stereotyped--- ‘ghetto, ridiculous---absurd.’ But my name is a Melody---”
She is proud of her name, proud of her heritage. I relate to this as my grandfather’s last name was Cilberto. He came over from Sicily as a young orphan of about ten years. When naturalized, his name was changed to the more American sounding Gilbert. I love Cilberto and would ask my dad why he never changed our name back to that. Such is the name game when it comes to playing it safe and avoiding stereotypes. Dralandra asks the reader this question. “Has culture caught ya tongue?”
In her poem “Black Sheep,” she writes:
“They called me different--- as if it were something to fix. As if standing apart Meant I was torn.”
Again, she is told to blend in, acquiesce from who she really is. And again, she refuses:
“I was told to Smile politely fold yourself smaller and fit in the frame I spoke in my own language And they called it noise. But I wasn’t too much. They were just too afraid to stand beside a woman on full volume!”
Larkins is on “full volume” throughout this masterful book of verse. She lays claim:
“This face? It doesn’t flinch anymore. It testifies.”
Dralandra, in “Holy Note,” tells us that
“God didn’t draft you. Didn’t sketch you in pencil, You were inked with purpose.”
Yes, this poet obviously was inked with purpose. She was meant to write, meant to be a voice for her people, for all women who have no voice yet but need to find one, one that is strong, defiant, independent.
The poet reinforces this notion:
“she taught me How to deaf out what doesn’t serve me, to silence what harms, and amplify what heals. To listen--- Only to freedom and turn up the volume on my power.”
One must be so impressed with the strong, yet gentle voice of this poet. Defiance? Yes. Strength? Yes. But anger? Hardly. Thes poems are not about retaliation but more about resilience and identity.
“My mother could raise a child, raise her voice, and raise hell. But my mama didn’t raise no fool Didn’t raise no punk, She raised a flame a lover and a fighter, A poet--- Who might just be a problem.”
She is a poet with loud volume, a poet to be heard, who once is heard can never be un-heard.
In Dralandra’s poem, “When Hip-Hop Raised Me Wrong---I Loved Her Anyway,” she writes:
“Even when he beat women into punchlines--- turned our bodies into metaphors But I wasn’t trap rap I was poetry--- Rhythm and resistance they couldn’t name.”
This reminds us of what she already told us in an earlier poem, “My name is a melody.”Larkins shows a loving, tender side when she writes:
“Even love glistens in darkness … They lie still --- Bare, In one another’s nature … Just pillow thoughts Unspoken. Just skin Only breath Just them.”
At three-quarters of a century old, I have experienced plenty of joy but also plenty of pain in relationships and my motto is like what she says in a poem, “Heart guarded, / but never hardened.” Larkin goes on to say, “Your trauma is not your inheritance. / Leave what haunts.”
In “To My Younger Self Who Just Needed Joy,” she tells herself:
“Baby girl one day the world will clap for you--- and you won’t have to prove yourself to earn it.”
This reviewer is still clapping and must admit this review has not been so easy to write. The reason is that I always try to include some of the best lines from the book to showcase the writing prowess of the poet. But picking those lines from this poet’s work is difficult because I could have found myself rewriting the entire book. Dralandra Larkins showers us with talent to which we react with some sadness, some smiles and much applause.
In “The Verdict” she writes:
“I set fire To the lies I wore like lipstick. Verity blistered into ember, Hot enough to unseal the part of me I forgot to speak into flame. I echoed confessions, Across the courtroom of the cosmos Put silence on trial.”
Dralandra surely does “put silence/ on trial.” And lucky for us, she has done just that.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: jacob erin-cilberto is author of 26 books of poetry, his most recent being A Jersey Shore in Ryegate. He teaches at John Logan College and conducts workshops at Heartland Writers Guild, Southern Illinois Writers Guild and Union County Writers Guild. Posted February 1, 2026
Turning Back to Her Love Pages by Judy Lorenzen
Kelsay Books, 2025 46 Poems ~ 100 pages
ISBN: 978-1-639800-757-4
Review by Michael Escoubas
If you are one who, like this reviewer, laments the state of the world: its violence, its vitriolic rhetoric, the seeming absence of good manners, and forbearance. In short: lack of love and respect. Judy Lorenzen’s Turning Back to Her Love Pages will change your life. In the words of Kathryn Kurz, Assistant Professor of Education at York University . . . “Judy’s special gift is to show us that love is a choice; love is powerful, and love is the most excellent way.” Turning Back is lovingly dedicated to the author’s parents, who gave Judy the seeds of their lives, not knowing that what they gave would blossom into poetry and bloom forever.
The collection is divided into four sections: I. Second Chances, II. Portraits of Mother, III. Portraits of Father, and IV. Love Lives On. Each section adds to and builds upon the former, resulting in a fully orbed picture that gave birth to the whole.
The title poem “Turning Back to Her Love Pages” (Second Chances) provides helpful background about how her parents met. Their “love story began in 1949, / when they married after six weeks of meeting, / her, a high school graduate, waiting tables.” Soon their first child was born. Six more daughters graced their lives over the years. Jill was severely disabled. As with most marriages there were trials. Here is an especially poignant expression:
If love could die from troubles, the heart-framed mirrors of their hearts for each other would have shattered. But she loved him with a rare love that always reflected back a beautiful image of the one it was set on.
Amid their troubles and sufferings, life’s most important question takes center stage:
And what is love anyway? A commitment to stay—no matter what?
One poem builds upon the next. Like an artist’s brush strokes, Lorenzen’s canvas gradually fills with colors, landscapes, and loving portraits that shed fresh light upon the poet’s core question, what is love anyway?
Wisdom and irony play heavy in “What Mother Taught Me.” The poet’s family is moving from her childhood home in Malcolm, Nebraska. Judy’s heart is heavy. She weeps at the thought of leaving “a hundred thousand points of light in the soft violet sky.” Her mother inquires:
“Look at my trees I love, smell the fragrance of these green grasses, listen to the crickets’ last song for me, and look, look at those stars— I’m losing everything!”
The poem rounds out with deep-founded wisdom that justifies the price of the book. The irony noted above will resonate. Don’t miss this one!
Moving into Section III “Portraits of Father,” I was reminded of my own father. “What the Depression Taught My Father,” placed me with my own:
be grateful for the job you have— never assume you’ll always have it never assume you will have a home tomorrow be grateful if you have a roof over your head shut the lights off when you leave the room know that all work is honorable get rid of any pride you have
The poem, thirty-seven pregnant lines of how to live and what to do, surely must have instilled a sense of awe and dread within the psyche of a young girl. “What Brought Him Back” signals that all was not well in the household. Consisting entirely of questions. Here’s a sample:
Was it the love of a woman who would not stop believing in him? Was it a vow he had spoken and committed to years earlier? Was it the moon watching him, night after night, as he was making his decision?
My sense, from reading between the poet’s lines, is that good somehow finds it way to the surface. All the trouble, all the suffering, somehow gets reconciled. “Fog” is that kind of reconciling poem. It is a poem that many finally write in the heart’s depth, if not on the page:
I’d give anything to see my father again, a man whose love I rejected most of my life when the fog of resentment obscured my perspective— then I took his love for granted like he owed it to me. But death and memory offer the sorrows of hindsight, the blessing of clear vision. Now I see everything, and what I see is all I failed at, and what I remember is goodness, and the only thing I feel is mountains of love.
Ah, yes . . . mountains of love . . . would that all of us give our parents credit for doing the best they could with what they were given. Thank you, Judy Lorenzen.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment. Posted February 1, 2026
The collection is divided into four sections: I. Second Chances, II. Portraits of Mother, III. Portraits of Father, and IV. Love Lives On. Each section adds to and builds upon the former, resulting in a fully orbed picture that gave birth to the whole.
The title poem “Turning Back to Her Love Pages” (Second Chances) provides helpful background about how her parents met. Their “love story began in 1949, / when they married after six weeks of meeting, / her, a high school graduate, waiting tables.” Soon their first child was born. Six more daughters graced their lives over the years. Jill was severely disabled. As with most marriages there were trials. Here is an especially poignant expression:
If love could die from troubles, the heart-framed mirrors of their hearts for each other would have shattered. But she loved him with a rare love that always reflected back a beautiful image of the one it was set on.
Amid their troubles and sufferings, life’s most important question takes center stage:
And what is love anyway? A commitment to stay—no matter what?
One poem builds upon the next. Like an artist’s brush strokes, Lorenzen’s canvas gradually fills with colors, landscapes, and loving portraits that shed fresh light upon the poet’s core question, what is love anyway?
Wisdom and irony play heavy in “What Mother Taught Me.” The poet’s family is moving from her childhood home in Malcolm, Nebraska. Judy’s heart is heavy. She weeps at the thought of leaving “a hundred thousand points of light in the soft violet sky.” Her mother inquires:
“Look at my trees I love, smell the fragrance of these green grasses, listen to the crickets’ last song for me, and look, look at those stars— I’m losing everything!”
The poem rounds out with deep-founded wisdom that justifies the price of the book. The irony noted above will resonate. Don’t miss this one!
Moving into Section III “Portraits of Father,” I was reminded of my own father. “What the Depression Taught My Father,” placed me with my own:
be grateful for the job you have— never assume you’ll always have it never assume you will have a home tomorrow be grateful if you have a roof over your head shut the lights off when you leave the room know that all work is honorable get rid of any pride you have
The poem, thirty-seven pregnant lines of how to live and what to do, surely must have instilled a sense of awe and dread within the psyche of a young girl. “What Brought Him Back” signals that all was not well in the household. Consisting entirely of questions. Here’s a sample:
Was it the love of a woman who would not stop believing in him? Was it a vow he had spoken and committed to years earlier? Was it the moon watching him, night after night, as he was making his decision?
My sense, from reading between the poet’s lines, is that good somehow finds it way to the surface. All the trouble, all the suffering, somehow gets reconciled. “Fog” is that kind of reconciling poem. It is a poem that many finally write in the heart’s depth, if not on the page:
I’d give anything to see my father again, a man whose love I rejected most of my life when the fog of resentment obscured my perspective— then I took his love for granted like he owed it to me. But death and memory offer the sorrows of hindsight, the blessing of clear vision. Now I see everything, and what I see is all I failed at, and what I remember is goodness, and the only thing I feel is mountains of love.
Ah, yes . . . mountains of love . . . would that all of us give our parents credit for doing the best they could with what they were given. Thank you, Judy Lorenzen.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment. Posted February 1, 2026
For Those Who Mourn by Trudy Kleckner
FriesenPress, 2025 66 pages
ISBN: 978-1038348241
Review by Carol Parris Krauss
For Those Who Mourn is a poetry collection that addresses death, grief, and navigating loss. Kleckner’s poetry conveys that each person experiences grief and mourns differently, and that losing a loved one—whether a parent, sibling, child, dear friend, or partner—can be traumatic and unique. She also implores the reader to cherish life. Trudy Kleckner holds a master's degree in social work (MSW) and worked as a licensed marriage and family therapist for about 25 years. She's published multiple poetry collections including Paper Airplanes, (2016), Riding the Rainbow (2019), Bring Light (2023), in addition to For Those Who Mourn. Her therapeutic background is evident in each word, line, and poem of For Those Who Mourn. As I worked on reviewing Kleckner’s book, I was called by hospice to tell my Mother good-bye. She passed away the day after my daughter and I visited her. Kleckner’s book helped to guide me through those days, and was never far from my side.
Letting go can be one of the hardest experiences a human must endure. In “Called to Transform,” Kleckner advises us that “...the world can teach us how to live/grow/ripen/and let go.” Within these few short lines the impact of what can be given to us, and what we must eventually do is conveyed. Sometimes the letting go process can be drawn out as expressed in “The Waiting Game.” No one is ever prepared for the loss of a loved one, and sometimes the process of the loss of life does involve painful waiting that can be personified as something that “...stalks in/trailing a dark dusty cloak.” As I navigated the loss of my Mother, I reflected on my Father's death, which occurred a few years earlier. “The Man” came at that time. The idea that the man that we have lost is a hero is universal. The poem’s lyrical list of fatherly actions made me smile and cry at times as I reflected on my own Father. “Know he loved you dearly/you/his shining light.” We will all experience loss at some point in our lives. In the days immediately after such a death, we are often busy with funeral preparations. Often too busy to feel the impacts. “After Loss” personifies this passage as a “complex swamp” but the poem ends by reminding the readers to “...remember, cry, laugh, together.”
I laughed and I cried as I read For Those Who Mourn. I found it to be a much needed support with valuable adages that helped me at a very tender time. Kleckner’s voice, compassion, and honesty are evident throughout the collection. She employs symbolism, imagery, and personification to convey to the reader that the experience of loss is unique, and it will be painful, but to never forget that the experience of life is beautiful. And to never forget that either.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Carol Parris Krauss is the author of "Mountain. Memory. Marsh." (Fernwood Press, 2025). Carol was born in S.C., to mystical mountain people, raised in NC, and attended Clemson University. She currently lives in Virginia with her St. Bernard, Martha June.
Posted February 1, 2026
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Carol Parris Krauss is the author of "Mountain. Memory. Marsh." (Fernwood Press, 2025). Carol was born in S.C., to mystical mountain people, raised in NC, and attended Clemson University. She currently lives in Virginia with her St. Bernard, Martha June.
Posted February 1, 2026
Entwine by Mary Newell
BlazeVOX [books], 2025 94 pages
ISBN: 978-1609644925
Review by Patricia Carragon
We live in a world where global warming is unstoppable. Reality is supported by the greedy elite, politicians elected on broken promises, the distrust of scientific evidence, and humans who think only of themselves and not the consequences. Mary Newell’s Entwine is an ecological wake-up call to save the environment.
Ms. Newell writes with the eyes of Audubon, the mind of Thoreau, and the soul of the Appalachian Trail. Using the verb “entwine” as the title fits the character of her words, artistry, and scientific observation. Her days in the Hudson Highlands crafted a poetic journal with black-and-white photographic depictions—the symmetries of trees and the wonders of birds in flight.
In “Flying Jewels Fading,” Newell writes about the shrinking habitats of birds native to the Hudson Highlands and elsewhere, on the verge of extinction at an alarming rate:
During pandemonium, names of old friends echo – call quick to verify they remain among the visible. Some, still on the map but fading out of likeness.
Meanwhile, hummers and salvias, that co-evolutionary duo together again and again throughout the Americas, yet threatened with shrinking habitat.
Not only fauna is threatened, but flora as well, as told in “Hard to Know the Whole of It.” As a lover of trees, my special oak tree outside my window recently had the branch that I used to touch amputated during brick repairs on my building. It sadly hangs on the scaffold until its removal. The tree will live, but its lost limb will leave a scar.
These stanzas remind me of my tree’s dilemma:
“Trees are quite commonly beat upon,” rooted in places as they are: assaulted by chainsaws, windstorms, humans wanting more sunlight, more asphalt, more…
Trees can’t heal like animals. “The trick is in sealing, not healing.”
Water is like a living spirit that flows against the banks of untouched land. Newell captures this in “Shape of Water Shaping Rocky Banks.” We feel the words photographing the lines of life, the “stomp of many boots,” past and present. For the Copper Mine Brook, water and its banks age gracefully. For instance:
ponder how rock resists the mutable but mellows smooth with slick touch
in time in flow
how water knows to over-slide boulders, toss small pebbles, permeate moss
From the gentle flow of poetry enhanced by Newell’s call to eco-advocacy and her exquisite photography, the reader will appreciate the wisdom of nature and science. Time is ticking under this administration. As in “And Yet, the Seed!” we are the seeds of tomorrow:
Every one of these seeds… will be found to be winged or legged in another fashion.
We must plant new seeds for tomorrow—for the world to welcome future generations of humans, flora, and fauna to enjoy what this world was intended to be. Mary Newell’s Entwine is an ecological wake-up call, and we can do better. The future is up to us. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mary Newell, PhD, is an educator, eco-writer, and certified Feldenkrais practitioner whose work bridges embodied experience and ecological consciousness. A college professor and scholar of literature and environmental studies, Newell teaches Creative Writing and literature at the University of Connecticut, Stamford. ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Patricia Carragon received a 2025 Best of the Net nomination for her haiku, “Cherry Blossoms,” from Poets Wear Prada. She hosts Brownstone Poets and is the editor-in-chief of its annual anthology. She is the editor of Sense & Sensibility Haiku Journal and listed on the poet registry for The Haiku Foundation. Her jazz poetry collection, Stranger on the Shore from Human Error Publishing, is forthcoming. Posted February 1, 2026
Ms. Newell writes with the eyes of Audubon, the mind of Thoreau, and the soul of the Appalachian Trail. Using the verb “entwine” as the title fits the character of her words, artistry, and scientific observation. Her days in the Hudson Highlands crafted a poetic journal with black-and-white photographic depictions—the symmetries of trees and the wonders of birds in flight.
In “Flying Jewels Fading,” Newell writes about the shrinking habitats of birds native to the Hudson Highlands and elsewhere, on the verge of extinction at an alarming rate:
During pandemonium, names of old friends echo – call quick to verify they remain among the visible. Some, still on the map but fading out of likeness.
Meanwhile, hummers and salvias, that co-evolutionary duo together again and again throughout the Americas, yet threatened with shrinking habitat.
Not only fauna is threatened, but flora as well, as told in “Hard to Know the Whole of It.” As a lover of trees, my special oak tree outside my window recently had the branch that I used to touch amputated during brick repairs on my building. It sadly hangs on the scaffold until its removal. The tree will live, but its lost limb will leave a scar.
These stanzas remind me of my tree’s dilemma:
“Trees are quite commonly beat upon,” rooted in places as they are: assaulted by chainsaws, windstorms, humans wanting more sunlight, more asphalt, more…
Trees can’t heal like animals. “The trick is in sealing, not healing.”
Water is like a living spirit that flows against the banks of untouched land. Newell captures this in “Shape of Water Shaping Rocky Banks.” We feel the words photographing the lines of life, the “stomp of many boots,” past and present. For the Copper Mine Brook, water and its banks age gracefully. For instance:
ponder how rock resists the mutable but mellows smooth with slick touch
in time in flow
how water knows to over-slide boulders, toss small pebbles, permeate moss
From the gentle flow of poetry enhanced by Newell’s call to eco-advocacy and her exquisite photography, the reader will appreciate the wisdom of nature and science. Time is ticking under this administration. As in “And Yet, the Seed!” we are the seeds of tomorrow:
Every one of these seeds… will be found to be winged or legged in another fashion.
We must plant new seeds for tomorrow—for the world to welcome future generations of humans, flora, and fauna to enjoy what this world was intended to be. Mary Newell’s Entwine is an ecological wake-up call, and we can do better. The future is up to us. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mary Newell, PhD, is an educator, eco-writer, and certified Feldenkrais practitioner whose work bridges embodied experience and ecological consciousness. A college professor and scholar of literature and environmental studies, Newell teaches Creative Writing and literature at the University of Connecticut, Stamford. ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Patricia Carragon received a 2025 Best of the Net nomination for her haiku, “Cherry Blossoms,” from Poets Wear Prada. She hosts Brownstone Poets and is the editor-in-chief of its annual anthology. She is the editor of Sense & Sensibility Haiku Journal and listed on the poet registry for The Haiku Foundation. Her jazz poetry collection, Stranger on the Shore from Human Error Publishing, is forthcoming. Posted February 1, 2026
Something Small of How to See a River by Teresa Dzieglewicz
Tupelo Press, 2025 75 pages
ISBN: 978-1946482822
"You Can't Quiet the River," Review by Carol Parris Krauss
In the summer of 2025, I had the pleasure of attending a professional development for teachers at Harvard University. One of the speakers was the Director of Harvard University Native American Studies, Jordan Clark. And while Clark, a member of the Aquinnah tribe, discussed cultural appropriation with the group, he also discussed the importance of using all our voices to honor the history, culture, and sacred stories of Native Americans.
In Teresa Dzieglewicz’s inaugural collection, Something Small of How to See a River, she recounts through narrative and lyrical poetry the story of the Oceti Sakowin Camp at Standing Rock and the Water is Life movement there. Across the collection, she meditates on control, state and environmental violence, whiteness and its failures, and the daily chores of care, joy, and solidarity that sustained the Indigenous- and youth-led resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. She also asks, Who tells the stories–the government, participants, activists, or media–or does everyone have a page to write? Lastly, she reminds us that the river is one of the strongest voices in this collection and in nature.
I found the timeline of the Water for movement quest to stymy the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (in the preface) very helpful, as I fell into Dzieglewicz’s poetry. The first poem, “August at Ochetahi, One Year Later,” is a poignant reflection on revisiting the site and the movement's memories. It grabs the reader immediately with the first line, “Crawl beyond barbed wire.” It continues to serve as a witness to the movement 360 days after the event, showing that the government can’t erase what happened. Dzieglewicz writes, “The state can take but not replace the hooves that spoke small o’s along the dirt.”
The river is personified in “The Story Starts Like This: With Scraps of Shells.” This river is not beholden to anyone. It is not damned, controlled, or an implement of war. But the soldiers arrive and try to gain control of it. Forgetting that you can’t contain it or its voice. Once they arrive, they rename the body of water. “But when the soldiers came, saw the sun-lit stones, warm and breathy as eggs, they re-christened her the Cannonball: because when destiny means only more and more, when all your tools are weapons, even a river starts to look like war.” This is a feeble attempt at corralling a river with a name change. The Water is Life movement recognizes the danger in attempting to convert the river into a war zone.
The Water is Life movement at Standing Rock was only partially successful: it did not permanently stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, but it increased visibility of Indigenous rights, shifted public discourse on environmental justice, and helped spur ongoing legal and policy challenges. Each voice in the collection has a different perspective and an agenda. As every poem in the collection unfolds, the reader encounters the language of the land and people, among the strongest of which is the river. “In a Word Choice,” Dzieglewicz speaks of this voice and the need to preserve Indigenous land when she writes, “We protect the water for everyone…”
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Carol Parris Krauss is the author of "Mountain. Memory. Marsh." This most recent poetry collection was recently published by Fernwood Press. Posted January 1, 2026
In Teresa Dzieglewicz’s inaugural collection, Something Small of How to See a River, she recounts through narrative and lyrical poetry the story of the Oceti Sakowin Camp at Standing Rock and the Water is Life movement there. Across the collection, she meditates on control, state and environmental violence, whiteness and its failures, and the daily chores of care, joy, and solidarity that sustained the Indigenous- and youth-led resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. She also asks, Who tells the stories–the government, participants, activists, or media–or does everyone have a page to write? Lastly, she reminds us that the river is one of the strongest voices in this collection and in nature.
I found the timeline of the Water for movement quest to stymy the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (in the preface) very helpful, as I fell into Dzieglewicz’s poetry. The first poem, “August at Ochetahi, One Year Later,” is a poignant reflection on revisiting the site and the movement's memories. It grabs the reader immediately with the first line, “Crawl beyond barbed wire.” It continues to serve as a witness to the movement 360 days after the event, showing that the government can’t erase what happened. Dzieglewicz writes, “The state can take but not replace the hooves that spoke small o’s along the dirt.”
The river is personified in “The Story Starts Like This: With Scraps of Shells.” This river is not beholden to anyone. It is not damned, controlled, or an implement of war. But the soldiers arrive and try to gain control of it. Forgetting that you can’t contain it or its voice. Once they arrive, they rename the body of water. “But when the soldiers came, saw the sun-lit stones, warm and breathy as eggs, they re-christened her the Cannonball: because when destiny means only more and more, when all your tools are weapons, even a river starts to look like war.” This is a feeble attempt at corralling a river with a name change. The Water is Life movement recognizes the danger in attempting to convert the river into a war zone.
The Water is Life movement at Standing Rock was only partially successful: it did not permanently stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, but it increased visibility of Indigenous rights, shifted public discourse on environmental justice, and helped spur ongoing legal and policy challenges. Each voice in the collection has a different perspective and an agenda. As every poem in the collection unfolds, the reader encounters the language of the land and people, among the strongest of which is the river. “In a Word Choice,” Dzieglewicz speaks of this voice and the need to preserve Indigenous land when she writes, “We protect the water for everyone…”
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Carol Parris Krauss is the author of "Mountain. Memory. Marsh." This most recent poetry collection was recently published by Fernwood Press. Posted January 1, 2026
The Impossible Physics of the Hummingbird by Kim Farrar
Unsolicited Press, 2025 114 pages
ISBN: 978-1963115512
Review by Arlyn Miller
There is an affecting through-line of love, loss and attentive leaning in in Kim Farrar’s, The Impossible Physics of the Hummingbird. Interspersed among the poems are photographs, drawings and collages made by Farrar which help amplify the text and create additional layers of meaning
Early on, readers are introduced to the extraordinary connection between the poet and her brother, and their mutual connection to the natural world. In the opening poems, the poet grapples with her brother’s complicated life and with his death. In the last two lines of “Calamities of the Natural World,” Farrar writes, You had to love him whole; you had to love his whole slow falling apart.
The book’s opening poem, “Spider,” looks at the connection at close range, Look there, you instruct, a perfect spider’s web. Each glistening fiber jeweled with dew.
Here we see Farrar’s brother showing her how to look at and appreciate the world.
“Why It’s Hard to Write About My Brother,” perhaps the strongest poem in the collection, is a heartrending litany, each reason beginning with the word, Because. The poem details compelling particulars of this brother, this brother-sister relationship. Other poems employ a well-develop metaphor. In “Dear Pluto,” for instance, we feel the pull and plight of a planet that is an outsider, [o]utcast among the riffraff pulled by gravity and dark matter, now nobody’s son.
In the poems final lines, Farrar asks, Already disappeared from texts and diagrams, who will cherish you? Who will remember?
With equivalent pathos, Farrar includes poems about parenting her autistic daughter. The poem, “Powerful Forces” begins: Watching my autistic daughter stand at the ocean’s edge, I imagine that words for her are sound clusters in primary colors.
But today, I forget about trying to extract language, trying to hear her voice. The ocean fills the space where the trying goes.
The poem’s concluding lines are prayerful: Lord, look how beautiful she is. Lord, let others love how she lifts her face to the wind.
The Impossible Physics of the Hummingbird is also a window onto the poet’s melancholic love for her deceased father, her pain over her infirm, aging mother’s circumstances, and her struggle with her own cancer diagnosis and treatment. An apt description of the book is perhaps Wordsworth famous assertion that poetry takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility. It may be tranquil recollection which enables Farrar to interweave humor with subjects as serious as her cancer odyssey. Her poem, “The Box” begins: The box has been delivered and set upon the dining room table. You read the label, shake it, and listen. This is the visiting nurse’s equipment. Even though you know what lurks inside, you can’t help being excited by a parcel.
The poem concludes that once hooked up to the chemo, Farrar …turn[s] on America’s Funniest Home Videos because the kid with the bat will hit his dad in the nuts, the table under the drunk dancer will collapse, the dog on the skateboard will crash, and it’s good to know what’s coming.
Buy this book; support independent presses. Read this book; it will be time well spent. As The Impossible Physics of the Hummingbird evinces, Farrar never loses sight of the fundamental early lesson she learned from her brother: Look there. It’s a good directive for readers as well.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Arlyn Miller is the poet, publisher, and instructor inspiring writers of all ages under the umbrella of PoeticLicenseInc.net.
Posted January 1, 2026
There is an affecting through-line of love, loss and attentive leaning in in Kim Farrar’s, The Impossible Physics of the Hummingbird. Interspersed among the poems are photographs, drawings and collages made by Farrar which help amplify the text and create additional layers of meaning
Early on, readers are introduced to the extraordinary connection between the poet and her brother, and their mutual connection to the natural world. In the opening poems, the poet grapples with her brother’s complicated life and with his death. In the last two lines of “Calamities of the Natural World,” Farrar writes, You had to love him whole; you had to love his whole slow falling apart.
The book’s opening poem, “Spider,” looks at the connection at close range, Look there, you instruct, a perfect spider’s web. Each glistening fiber jeweled with dew.
Here we see Farrar’s brother showing her how to look at and appreciate the world.
“Why It’s Hard to Write About My Brother,” perhaps the strongest poem in the collection, is a heartrending litany, each reason beginning with the word, Because. The poem details compelling particulars of this brother, this brother-sister relationship. Other poems employ a well-develop metaphor. In “Dear Pluto,” for instance, we feel the pull and plight of a planet that is an outsider, [o]utcast among the riffraff pulled by gravity and dark matter, now nobody’s son.
In the poems final lines, Farrar asks, Already disappeared from texts and diagrams, who will cherish you? Who will remember?
With equivalent pathos, Farrar includes poems about parenting her autistic daughter. The poem, “Powerful Forces” begins: Watching my autistic daughter stand at the ocean’s edge, I imagine that words for her are sound clusters in primary colors.
But today, I forget about trying to extract language, trying to hear her voice. The ocean fills the space where the trying goes.
The poem’s concluding lines are prayerful: Lord, look how beautiful she is. Lord, let others love how she lifts her face to the wind.
The Impossible Physics of the Hummingbird is also a window onto the poet’s melancholic love for her deceased father, her pain over her infirm, aging mother’s circumstances, and her struggle with her own cancer diagnosis and treatment. An apt description of the book is perhaps Wordsworth famous assertion that poetry takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility. It may be tranquil recollection which enables Farrar to interweave humor with subjects as serious as her cancer odyssey. Her poem, “The Box” begins: The box has been delivered and set upon the dining room table. You read the label, shake it, and listen. This is the visiting nurse’s equipment. Even though you know what lurks inside, you can’t help being excited by a parcel.
The poem concludes that once hooked up to the chemo, Farrar …turn[s] on America’s Funniest Home Videos because the kid with the bat will hit his dad in the nuts, the table under the drunk dancer will collapse, the dog on the skateboard will crash, and it’s good to know what’s coming.
Buy this book; support independent presses. Read this book; it will be time well spent. As The Impossible Physics of the Hummingbird evinces, Farrar never loses sight of the fundamental early lesson she learned from her brother: Look there. It’s a good directive for readers as well.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Arlyn Miller is the poet, publisher, and instructor inspiring writers of all ages under the umbrella of PoeticLicenseInc.net.
Posted January 1, 2026
Thought Fish by Ruan Bradford Wright
Second Edition, Improved and Expanded
Fae Corps Publishing, 2024 70 pages
ISBN: 979-8330529803
Review by Tina Cole
Thought-fish is a luminous and imaginative collection that captures the restless movement of thought itself, fluid, unpredictable and full of quiet wonder. Wright’s poems balance clarity and mystery in a way that feels effortless, each piece seems to emerge naturally, like a ripple spreading across still water. What stands out most is Wright’s command of image and rhythm. Everyday moments, a fragment of memory, a flicker of emotion, the texture of a place are transformed into something layered and resonant. The poet’s language is playful yet precise, allowing ideas to shift shape and swim beneath the surface of the literal. The collection opens with "Bluebell Picking," a poem guaranteed to evoke childhood memories and ritual. It is evocative and nostalgic without feeling cloying. Wright uses this moment in time as more than description, the scene becomes metaphorical, emotional, layered. The bluebells may represent the fleetingness of time, the innocence of youth, the rootedness of place. Other favourite poems were "Boy on a Bike," where the image of a boy on a bike immediately evokes movement and memory, it suggests another moment of freedom and then holds open the possibility of something more tender or reflective. Wright uses concrete, vivid detail (the bike, the boy) as an anchor, which helps the reader access an emotional or reflective space without losing the groundedness of the scene. There’s also a subtle tension between innocence and experience, a boy riding a bike is simple, but the poem invites you to consider, perhaps, what it means to move forward, to leave something behind, to be on the cusp of change. I also enjoyed, "As if Satisfied," another poem filled with ambiguity that opens a space for longing, incompleteness, or the fragile nature of satisfaction. Wright’s willingness to evoke that half-feeling is a strength. In this poem, the tone feels contemplative, the speaker seems to hover between acceptance and desire which gives the piece emotional richness. What these poems show is Wright’s ability to take seemingly simple moments and render them in language that is both precise and open, rich in image but light in tone. The poems don’t shout; they invite. They leave space for the reader’s memory, for reflection. And they deliver value precisely because they’re crafted with attention to image, tone and emotional subtlety. The collection also shows an impressive range, some poems are sparse and meditative, drawing power from silence and space, while others are rich with sound and movement. Throughout, there’s a sensitivity to the music of words and a willingness to experiment with form that gives the book a fresh, modern energy. Ultimately, thought-fish feels both intimate and expansive, a collection that invites reflection and rewards rereading. It’s the work of a poet deeply attuned to the subtle currents of mind and language. I enjoyed the poems very much and recommend them to you.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Tina Cole is a retired Headteacher (principal). who lives in the U.K in rural Herefordshire near the Welsh borders. She has three published pamphlets, I Almost Knew You, (2018), Forged (Yaffle Press, 2021) and What it Was (Mark Time Books, 2023) .
Posted January 1, 2026
Thought-fish is a luminous and imaginative collection that captures the restless movement of thought itself, fluid, unpredictable and full of quiet wonder. Wright’s poems balance clarity and mystery in a way that feels effortless, each piece seems to emerge naturally, like a ripple spreading across still water. What stands out most is Wright’s command of image and rhythm. Everyday moments, a fragment of memory, a flicker of emotion, the texture of a place are transformed into something layered and resonant. The poet’s language is playful yet precise, allowing ideas to shift shape and swim beneath the surface of the literal. The collection opens with "Bluebell Picking," a poem guaranteed to evoke childhood memories and ritual. It is evocative and nostalgic without feeling cloying. Wright uses this moment in time as more than description, the scene becomes metaphorical, emotional, layered. The bluebells may represent the fleetingness of time, the innocence of youth, the rootedness of place. Other favourite poems were "Boy on a Bike," where the image of a boy on a bike immediately evokes movement and memory, it suggests another moment of freedom and then holds open the possibility of something more tender or reflective. Wright uses concrete, vivid detail (the bike, the boy) as an anchor, which helps the reader access an emotional or reflective space without losing the groundedness of the scene. There’s also a subtle tension between innocence and experience, a boy riding a bike is simple, but the poem invites you to consider, perhaps, what it means to move forward, to leave something behind, to be on the cusp of change. I also enjoyed, "As if Satisfied," another poem filled with ambiguity that opens a space for longing, incompleteness, or the fragile nature of satisfaction. Wright’s willingness to evoke that half-feeling is a strength. In this poem, the tone feels contemplative, the speaker seems to hover between acceptance and desire which gives the piece emotional richness. What these poems show is Wright’s ability to take seemingly simple moments and render them in language that is both precise and open, rich in image but light in tone. The poems don’t shout; they invite. They leave space for the reader’s memory, for reflection. And they deliver value precisely because they’re crafted with attention to image, tone and emotional subtlety. The collection also shows an impressive range, some poems are sparse and meditative, drawing power from silence and space, while others are rich with sound and movement. Throughout, there’s a sensitivity to the music of words and a willingness to experiment with form that gives the book a fresh, modern energy. Ultimately, thought-fish feels both intimate and expansive, a collection that invites reflection and rewards rereading. It’s the work of a poet deeply attuned to the subtle currents of mind and language. I enjoyed the poems very much and recommend them to you.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Tina Cole is a retired Headteacher (principal). who lives in the U.K in rural Herefordshire near the Welsh borders. She has three published pamphlets, I Almost Knew You, (2018), Forged (Yaffle Press, 2021) and What it Was (Mark Time Books, 2023) .
Posted January 1, 2026
A Jersey Shore in Ryegate by jacob erin-cilberto
Praying Mantis Press, 2025
64 pages
ISBN: 978-8294525613
Review by Laura Daniels
A Jersey Shore in Ryegate is the twenty-sixth poetry collection by jacob erin-cilberto. Each poem offers the reader an opportunity to go deep into a moment by interweaving vivid images and sonic tones.
I became aware of erin-cilberto’s poetry when I read the titular poem, “A Jersey Shore in Ryegate”, published by Highland Park Poetry as a Daily Poem. As someone born and raised in the Garden State (also known as New Jersey), I enjoyed experiencing this farmland as it was then and how it is now. This poem is written in the first person point, but I easily found myself in this memory:
There were raspberries in that pasture….
So many decades later…
no fence, no cows, no youth all of it grown over with brush that hill lost in adolescence…
leaves me still pondering what those cows thought of us…
A few of erin-cilberto's poems, like “A Jersey Shore in Ryegate,” reflect on Ryegate and Tickle Nake Pond, both in Vermont, and where the poet spent his summers during the 1950s. It is also featured in the cover photograph taken by the poet’s father in 1957.
Other topics covered in this collection include the impact of past events (such as the Vietnam War) and present-day events (such as climate change).
In “Veteran”, I can feel this soldier’s plight as he returns:
back to the earth of my normal existence I see nothing in the misty dawn no home, no job, no money no thanks
service to a country that abandoned its soldiers
This poem is timeless and relatable. It’s as true today as it was during the Vietnam War. The opening line of "Polling the Storms," "puddles are gargantuan tears," cries out, and unfolds the story that involves "…ego and thirst for power:"
and torrential rains not of a natural kind but ballyhooed by exterminators of life having thunder in one hand lightning in the other…
the tears are frozen in state we are all clowns with kerchiefs trying to ice skate
on spilled milk rather than just cleaning it up and starting over…
Erin-cilberto ends this poem as he ends many with a positive turn:
frozen or not we must sidestep the puddles and take a course of action that might turn the sky into a clear blue smile fit to drink.
Erin-cilberto covers heavy topics, but he also includes over a dozen poems about poetry. In these offerings, erin-cilberto pulls back the curtain and reveals poetry's complex inner workings. Each delivers a mini craft lesson and exploration into the life of a poem.
This is shown in the ending stanzas of “a syllabic lack of evidence’:
…the pen stabs the interrogator in the eye
with misdirection and with a very steady hand that could easily pass a lie detector the poet writes cursively creative verse to free himself
from impending confinement.
Erin-cilberto personifies a poem brilliantly in the opening stanza of “No Trespassing in Faulkner’s Town”:
a poem gets off the train in Fiction Town was immediately attacked and beaten verbs barely able to crawl away …hidden themes hiding behind rocks of unredeemable rhetoric
with poetry there is no law no protection from thieves or plunderers…
I’ll leave you with this mini craft lesson from the opening stanza of “Poetic Tensions”:
allow me to allow you to read deep into the bones of my poetic tensions a confession of sorts a sharing of point-of-view a straining to capsulate nature’s effect on the words of my poetic tensions…
….fragments of what remains of my poetic tensions and the lack of bone density but still a few words here and there that might make some sense.
This collection invites the reader back in again and again. Every time I return to the words, I’m taken deeper, and new nuances reveal themselves. I recommend adding it to your library and bedside table stack for easy access. ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Laura Daniels (she/her) is a neurodivergent multi-genre writer as well as founder/editor of The Fringe 999 Poetry Forum. https://lauradanielswriter.wordpress.com/about/
Posted January 1, 2026
A Jersey Shore in Ryegate is the twenty-sixth poetry collection by jacob erin-cilberto. Each poem offers the reader an opportunity to go deep into a moment by interweaving vivid images and sonic tones.
I became aware of erin-cilberto’s poetry when I read the titular poem, “A Jersey Shore in Ryegate”, published by Highland Park Poetry as a Daily Poem. As someone born and raised in the Garden State (also known as New Jersey), I enjoyed experiencing this farmland as it was then and how it is now. This poem is written in the first person point, but I easily found myself in this memory:
There were raspberries in that pasture….
So many decades later…
no fence, no cows, no youth all of it grown over with brush that hill lost in adolescence…
leaves me still pondering what those cows thought of us…
A few of erin-cilberto's poems, like “A Jersey Shore in Ryegate,” reflect on Ryegate and Tickle Nake Pond, both in Vermont, and where the poet spent his summers during the 1950s. It is also featured in the cover photograph taken by the poet’s father in 1957.
Other topics covered in this collection include the impact of past events (such as the Vietnam War) and present-day events (such as climate change).
In “Veteran”, I can feel this soldier’s plight as he returns:
back to the earth of my normal existence I see nothing in the misty dawn no home, no job, no money no thanks
service to a country that abandoned its soldiers
This poem is timeless and relatable. It’s as true today as it was during the Vietnam War. The opening line of "Polling the Storms," "puddles are gargantuan tears," cries out, and unfolds the story that involves "…ego and thirst for power:"
and torrential rains not of a natural kind but ballyhooed by exterminators of life having thunder in one hand lightning in the other…
the tears are frozen in state we are all clowns with kerchiefs trying to ice skate
on spilled milk rather than just cleaning it up and starting over…
Erin-cilberto ends this poem as he ends many with a positive turn:
frozen or not we must sidestep the puddles and take a course of action that might turn the sky into a clear blue smile fit to drink.
Erin-cilberto covers heavy topics, but he also includes over a dozen poems about poetry. In these offerings, erin-cilberto pulls back the curtain and reveals poetry's complex inner workings. Each delivers a mini craft lesson and exploration into the life of a poem.
This is shown in the ending stanzas of “a syllabic lack of evidence’:
…the pen stabs the interrogator in the eye
with misdirection and with a very steady hand that could easily pass a lie detector the poet writes cursively creative verse to free himself
from impending confinement.
Erin-cilberto personifies a poem brilliantly in the opening stanza of “No Trespassing in Faulkner’s Town”:
a poem gets off the train in Fiction Town was immediately attacked and beaten verbs barely able to crawl away …hidden themes hiding behind rocks of unredeemable rhetoric
with poetry there is no law no protection from thieves or plunderers…
I’ll leave you with this mini craft lesson from the opening stanza of “Poetic Tensions”:
allow me to allow you to read deep into the bones of my poetic tensions a confession of sorts a sharing of point-of-view a straining to capsulate nature’s effect on the words of my poetic tensions…
….fragments of what remains of my poetic tensions and the lack of bone density but still a few words here and there that might make some sense.
This collection invites the reader back in again and again. Every time I return to the words, I’m taken deeper, and new nuances reveal themselves. I recommend adding it to your library and bedside table stack for easy access. ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Laura Daniels (she/her) is a neurodivergent multi-genre writer as well as founder/editor of The Fringe 999 Poetry Forum. https://lauradanielswriter.wordpress.com/about/
Posted January 1, 2026
Heirloom by Catherine-Esther Cowie
Carcanet Press Ltd., 2025 96 pages
ISBN: 978-1800174795
Review by jacob erin-cilberto
Heirloom: a valuable object that has belonged to a family for several generations. Before my parents passed, they asked me what of theirs I would like for myself. The only item I really wanted was a book of photographs. It is a very old one filled with black and white photos of their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, people they couldn’t even identify. Those pictures went back to the early 1900’s. An heirloom that has more worth than money could ever buy. Priceless. Priceless is what this book Heirloom is as Catherine-Esther Cowie takes us with her on a journey through four generations of women, what they survived, their defeats and victories. This is a book of poetry that defines faith, strength and deliverance through the toughest trials. Cowie begins with these words: “Image of our own making More paper and ink than flesh” She lets on that her poetry will show us her perspective of these four generations of women in her family. In “Blessed Be My Unwed Head,” she writes: “How noise in my head grows and grows, Splinters into phantoms and shapes, Graceless muses for her cot-mobile How I terror.” What a splendid use of the noun “terror” as a verb. So clever. In “Body Talk” she speaks of “A child we made on purpose, not like the first one. Now you slow, slow and shutter, hold onto your bruises longer.” We could see these words as identifying those silently suffering abuse, blaming themselves for it and feeling lucky to have a man. But to live in constant fear? Unfortunately, so many have. We see the body giving away with bruises what the heart will not admit. In another poem Catherine-Esther writes: “The first time God pulled me Into a body, I imagined myself a fruit, soft and spilling.” Later in the poem she writes: “We pitched forward in the dark; he had the knife, I was the ram undoing him with my teeth, our desecration darkening his fingertips Each time I offered my body, he grew a vision--- a raintree, the sky aflame, children, burning.”
Wow, what incredibly strong words. Power unleashed— “Even when the man hurt me My body could not forget Awakening.” People may only be kept down so long and then they wake up to the hurt they may have let happen and fight back. In “What I Know,” “I hit Auntie in the face she tried to sell my sisters I hit her again. We hid. I hit my daughter. Even now, She throws the past at me, Some sports uniform I burnt When she was thirteen.” Shades of Joan Crawford and “Mommy Dearest.” I know a mother who was mistreated at a young age by a stepmother and in some ways that was passed on to her children. Some scars do not totally heal and when they re-bleed, others may suffer. “On Repetition” has the speaker showing us: “Sunday afternoons my front porch my child right here by my side banging some toy into its broken parts” The woman appears to see herself and her own broken parts. She continues: “ A woman shuttered and struck I ruffle my daughter’s hair Sing I touch the woman Bruised cheek.” “The same blues” repeated from generation to generation until “the rot rises/ freights your lungs.” Again, she has cleverly used a noun as a verb. There is such action in Catherine-Esther Cowie’s poetry even when there are acceptance and inaction---the strength lies within. Will it eventually flourish? Can we forge a new path, differing from what those before us were forced to endure? We can only hope our book of photographs shows what was, not what needs to be now. With her final words she once again reverts to using a noun as a verb with such verve--- “I string you into verse---- A vengeance, … I call you monster, I call you father How this song blues the kitchen floor Bloodies our feet.”
This poetry will “blues” our heart, and it will “hit us in the face” but will also make us cheer the strength and survival shown by the fight these women of four generations embody.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: jacob erin-cilberto is author of 26 books of poetry, his most recent being A Jersey Shore in Ryegate. He teaches at John Logan College and conducts workshops at Heartland Writers Guild, Southern Illinois Writers Guild and Union County Writers Guild.
Posted December 1, 2025
Heirloom: a valuable object that has belonged to a family for several generations. Before my parents passed, they asked me what of theirs I would like for myself. The only item I really wanted was a book of photographs. It is a very old one filled with black and white photos of their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, people they couldn’t even identify. Those pictures went back to the early 1900’s. An heirloom that has more worth than money could ever buy. Priceless. Priceless is what this book Heirloom is as Catherine-Esther Cowie takes us with her on a journey through four generations of women, what they survived, their defeats and victories. This is a book of poetry that defines faith, strength and deliverance through the toughest trials. Cowie begins with these words: “Image of our own making More paper and ink than flesh” She lets on that her poetry will show us her perspective of these four generations of women in her family. In “Blessed Be My Unwed Head,” she writes: “How noise in my head grows and grows, Splinters into phantoms and shapes, Graceless muses for her cot-mobile How I terror.” What a splendid use of the noun “terror” as a verb. So clever. In “Body Talk” she speaks of “A child we made on purpose, not like the first one. Now you slow, slow and shutter, hold onto your bruises longer.” We could see these words as identifying those silently suffering abuse, blaming themselves for it and feeling lucky to have a man. But to live in constant fear? Unfortunately, so many have. We see the body giving away with bruises what the heart will not admit. In another poem Catherine-Esther writes: “The first time God pulled me Into a body, I imagined myself a fruit, soft and spilling.” Later in the poem she writes: “We pitched forward in the dark; he had the knife, I was the ram undoing him with my teeth, our desecration darkening his fingertips Each time I offered my body, he grew a vision--- a raintree, the sky aflame, children, burning.”
Wow, what incredibly strong words. Power unleashed— “Even when the man hurt me My body could not forget Awakening.” People may only be kept down so long and then they wake up to the hurt they may have let happen and fight back. In “What I Know,” “I hit Auntie in the face she tried to sell my sisters I hit her again. We hid. I hit my daughter. Even now, She throws the past at me, Some sports uniform I burnt When she was thirteen.” Shades of Joan Crawford and “Mommy Dearest.” I know a mother who was mistreated at a young age by a stepmother and in some ways that was passed on to her children. Some scars do not totally heal and when they re-bleed, others may suffer. “On Repetition” has the speaker showing us: “Sunday afternoons my front porch my child right here by my side banging some toy into its broken parts” The woman appears to see herself and her own broken parts. She continues: “ A woman shuttered and struck I ruffle my daughter’s hair Sing I touch the woman Bruised cheek.” “The same blues” repeated from generation to generation until “the rot rises/ freights your lungs.” Again, she has cleverly used a noun as a verb. There is such action in Catherine-Esther Cowie’s poetry even when there are acceptance and inaction---the strength lies within. Will it eventually flourish? Can we forge a new path, differing from what those before us were forced to endure? We can only hope our book of photographs shows what was, not what needs to be now. With her final words she once again reverts to using a noun as a verb with such verve--- “I string you into verse---- A vengeance, … I call you monster, I call you father How this song blues the kitchen floor Bloodies our feet.”
This poetry will “blues” our heart, and it will “hit us in the face” but will also make us cheer the strength and survival shown by the fight these women of four generations embody.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: jacob erin-cilberto is author of 26 books of poetry, his most recent being A Jersey Shore in Ryegate. He teaches at John Logan College and conducts workshops at Heartland Writers Guild, Southern Illinois Writers Guild and Union County Writers Guild.
Posted December 1, 2025
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Message in a Bottle: Poets Respond to Hopeful Communication Edited by Mary Beth Bretzlauf, William T. Carey, Jennifer Dotson, Irene Hoffman, Julie Isaacson, & Jen Meyer
Highland Park Poetry Press, 2025 117 pages
ISBN: 979-8988091974
Review by Michael Escoubas
Every year Highland Park Poetry Press comes out with another superb anthology. Contributors from all over the world and the United States offer their best work on a specific theme. The collaborative process results in a virtual banquet of poetic delights sure to please even the most sophisticated artistic palate. This year’s theme Message in a Bottle, is second to none in drawing fourth quality work.
Seventeen-year-old Briana Wessel’s “Lover’s Beach” stands out for its creativity. Note the plaintive messages both up and down as well as horizontally:
Where Children played, and grown-ups talked, I waited in the waves near shore. Did you see me, love? Did you see me seeing you? Did you see the bottle at your feet? You Must have, it’s your favorite color. Pink and rosy and divine, the color I see surrounding you. But now I see you turn to Go. Aren’t you going to join me? I’ve waited for oh so long. I yearn to be beneath the water with you once again. My Scales have begun to dry, my tail lying restlessly atop the soft waves. Sirens aren’t known to fall for humans, But you’re too special. Too perfect. Aren’t you still my friend? Aren’t you still my Love?
Message in a Bottle is all about effective communication. Terry L Slaney’s “Telephone” gives readers pause to consider differing ways of getting through to people:
We used bottles instead of tin cans at first but it didn’t work If you want the message to get through choose the right vessel won’t you?
The words in the bottle will remain, but in the tine can they will fly out on the bounty main of air and sound waves picked up again at the other end into the ear, and out, my friend.
From beyond our borders, Sreejata Roy, from Kolkata, India in which the shared “mes-sage” is contained within the “bottle” of the poet’s heart:
The Letting Go of Light
An untold conflagration of a loving heart: I am bottling the flames up, like fireflies stolen from the night and surrendering them to the river that meanders down my city. Let these disappear with the dissolving stars in the water or get lost in the tides of the yawning ocean I would risk them to never be received rather than having to extinguish them again and live on with the charred remains.
Roy’s impressive use of imagery: fireflies stolen from the night, dissolving stars in the water, and the yawning ocean, represent the first-rate talent on display throughout this superb anthology.
“Vintage Wine in the Cabinet,” by Chinese American poet William Marr, shows Marr’s skill with lineage ranging anywhere from two to seven syllables:
water and fire love and hate soul and flesh after countless fierce battles and intermingles it now becomes settled clear and bright
the older its age the more aromatic
floating on the sea of time emitting amber light this magic bottle from Arabian Nights is waiting patiently no, impatiently for someone to fish it up and uncork Marr’s signature cryptic style paints a vivid picture. One can easily visualize the subtle amber light of the bottle floating upon the sea. But Marr’s message runs deeper than that . . . it is a commentary on the human condition. The vintage wine of a wise heart . . . when will humankind drink deeply of peace, mercy, and grace?
By the time I had finished reading each poem in Message, I came to realize the editorial skills of the volume’s gifted team of editors. They have assembled a full-orbed portrait of the human condition. Morgan Silas Donnelly’s “Love Rings Out,” captures, with subtle charm, things this reviewer bottles up in his heart:
Love rings out in clear black night A bell without sound A fire without heat A jury without sight
Love rings out in clear dewy dawn A blue bird sings A kettle whistles The village comes alive A doe nuzzles her fawn
Love rings out in clear bright day Workers yell instructions Coffee is poured Dogs go for walks Recess arrives, and children play
Love rings out across the miles Across the waves Across the chasms To the stars and to the heavens when sweet memories bubble up and smiles erupt on the two who share knowing of how sweet love can be
Ah! Yes . . . the sweetness of love . . . order you copy today: Message in a Bottle: Poets Respond to Hopeful Communication . . . underpriced at a mere $15.00.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted December 1, 2025
Every year Highland Park Poetry Press comes out with another superb anthology. Contributors from all over the world and the United States offer their best work on a specific theme. The collaborative process results in a virtual banquet of poetic delights sure to please even the most sophisticated artistic palate. This year’s theme Message in a Bottle, is second to none in drawing fourth quality work.
Seventeen-year-old Briana Wessel’s “Lover’s Beach” stands out for its creativity. Note the plaintive messages both up and down as well as horizontally:
Where Children played, and grown-ups talked, I waited in the waves near shore. Did you see me, love? Did you see me seeing you? Did you see the bottle at your feet? You Must have, it’s your favorite color. Pink and rosy and divine, the color I see surrounding you. But now I see you turn to Go. Aren’t you going to join me? I’ve waited for oh so long. I yearn to be beneath the water with you once again. My Scales have begun to dry, my tail lying restlessly atop the soft waves. Sirens aren’t known to fall for humans, But you’re too special. Too perfect. Aren’t you still my friend? Aren’t you still my Love?
Message in a Bottle is all about effective communication. Terry L Slaney’s “Telephone” gives readers pause to consider differing ways of getting through to people:
We used bottles instead of tin cans at first but it didn’t work If you want the message to get through choose the right vessel won’t you?
The words in the bottle will remain, but in the tine can they will fly out on the bounty main of air and sound waves picked up again at the other end into the ear, and out, my friend.
From beyond our borders, Sreejata Roy, from Kolkata, India in which the shared “mes-sage” is contained within the “bottle” of the poet’s heart:
The Letting Go of Light
An untold conflagration of a loving heart: I am bottling the flames up, like fireflies stolen from the night and surrendering them to the river that meanders down my city. Let these disappear with the dissolving stars in the water or get lost in the tides of the yawning ocean I would risk them to never be received rather than having to extinguish them again and live on with the charred remains.
Roy’s impressive use of imagery: fireflies stolen from the night, dissolving stars in the water, and the yawning ocean, represent the first-rate talent on display throughout this superb anthology.
“Vintage Wine in the Cabinet,” by Chinese American poet William Marr, shows Marr’s skill with lineage ranging anywhere from two to seven syllables:
water and fire love and hate soul and flesh after countless fierce battles and intermingles it now becomes settled clear and bright
the older its age the more aromatic
floating on the sea of time emitting amber light this magic bottle from Arabian Nights is waiting patiently no, impatiently for someone to fish it up and uncork Marr’s signature cryptic style paints a vivid picture. One can easily visualize the subtle amber light of the bottle floating upon the sea. But Marr’s message runs deeper than that . . . it is a commentary on the human condition. The vintage wine of a wise heart . . . when will humankind drink deeply of peace, mercy, and grace?
By the time I had finished reading each poem in Message, I came to realize the editorial skills of the volume’s gifted team of editors. They have assembled a full-orbed portrait of the human condition. Morgan Silas Donnelly’s “Love Rings Out,” captures, with subtle charm, things this reviewer bottles up in his heart:
Love rings out in clear black night A bell without sound A fire without heat A jury without sight
Love rings out in clear dewy dawn A blue bird sings A kettle whistles The village comes alive A doe nuzzles her fawn
Love rings out in clear bright day Workers yell instructions Coffee is poured Dogs go for walks Recess arrives, and children play
Love rings out across the miles Across the waves Across the chasms To the stars and to the heavens when sweet memories bubble up and smiles erupt on the two who share knowing of how sweet love can be
Ah! Yes . . . the sweetness of love . . . order you copy today: Message in a Bottle: Poets Respond to Hopeful Communication . . . underpriced at a mere $15.00.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted December 1, 2025
Winter Poems by Jim Wilkerson
Independently Published, 2025 46 pages
ISBN: 979-8346676539
Review by Michael Escoubas
In his foreword to Winter Poems, Jim Wilkerson writes, Winter can be such a beautiful season. On several occasions Wallace Stevens affirms Wilkerson’s advocacy. In “The Snowman,” Stevens writes, “To behold the junipers shagged with ice, / The spruces rough in the distant glitter / of the January sun.” In another poem Stevens characterizes winter as “still full of icy shades and shapen snow.” While Stevens’ view of winter is often pejorative (he favors summer as the season in which “the mind lays by its trouble,” the examples cited do sound welcome notes of beauty in a season often associated with death and despair.
Enter Jim Wilkerson on centerstage. Jim’s debut collection is apt to challenge your mind about winter. It certainly has brought a change to this reviewer’s heart. My goal is to feature highlights that make buying a copy of Winter Poems well worth its modest asking price.
First off: The author’s titles speak to me and gain my interest. I live in these titles: “Autumn Says Goodbye,” “Snowbirds,” (I’m a snowbird myself). “Sledding Day,” and “Blizzard,” to cite but a few that drew me in.
The nicely rhymed “A Christmas Toy,” took me back to Christmas joy at eight years old:
He came in plastic And cardboard with graphics
He rolled down the table And everywhere he was able
He spun out in the bedroom Popped wheelies in the bathroom
He stood up in bed Then jumped off my head
He kept watch by my night stand While I dozed off to dreamland
A friend and protector of mine His name was Optimus Prime
While my Christmas morning treasures were well short of Optimus Prime, (I got a Roy Rogers cap gun and holster set), the feelings were the same. A gift that was all mine, something hoped for, realized. I wore that holster set with pride.
While early morning gift-openings are memories to treasure, Wilkerson presents a very adult seasonal dimension in “We’re Going.” The weather is cold and bleak but a friend in the hospital “With cancer / Lurking like a blizzard,” needs pastoral care:
It was a 40-mile trip One way Knowing by the time You head home It will be twice as white Twice as slick Twice as dangerous
The poem “Still” uses the word still, in skillful repetition to describe the longings of a soldier faraway. The haunting violence of war permeates the poet’s psyche thinks of his beloved knowing “that she loves me so / and she’s waiting, still.”
Variety pervades this exquisitely produced volume. Seven winter haiku are salt and peppered throughout”
#1 snow angels frozen I look where our hands once touched just three days ago
#3 pup sees first winter she doesn’t need to be told how to play in snow
#6 winter fisherman drills at a woman’s frozen heart still too thick
Wilkerson’s poems are written primarily in free verse. There are prose poems, short-syllabic poems, poems that are centered on the page, poems with a wide range of stanza configurations, as well as a lovely poem which honors Jim’s faith-tradition titled, “Did You Know,” Here’s an excerpt:
Unselfish love Blood poured out for all The red of Christmas.”
Indeed, the deeper meaning of winter is not lost on this budding new talent. Jim Wilkerson has something special when pen and paper meet the seasons of life.Winter Poems is proof-positive of that.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment. Posted December 1, 2025
In his foreword to Winter Poems, Jim Wilkerson writes, Winter can be such a beautiful season. On several occasions Wallace Stevens affirms Wilkerson’s advocacy. In “The Snowman,” Stevens writes, “To behold the junipers shagged with ice, / The spruces rough in the distant glitter / of the January sun.” In another poem Stevens characterizes winter as “still full of icy shades and shapen snow.” While Stevens’ view of winter is often pejorative (he favors summer as the season in which “the mind lays by its trouble,” the examples cited do sound welcome notes of beauty in a season often associated with death and despair.
Enter Jim Wilkerson on centerstage. Jim’s debut collection is apt to challenge your mind about winter. It certainly has brought a change to this reviewer’s heart. My goal is to feature highlights that make buying a copy of Winter Poems well worth its modest asking price.
First off: The author’s titles speak to me and gain my interest. I live in these titles: “Autumn Says Goodbye,” “Snowbirds,” (I’m a snowbird myself). “Sledding Day,” and “Blizzard,” to cite but a few that drew me in.
The nicely rhymed “A Christmas Toy,” took me back to Christmas joy at eight years old:
He came in plastic And cardboard with graphics
He rolled down the table And everywhere he was able
He spun out in the bedroom Popped wheelies in the bathroom
He stood up in bed Then jumped off my head
He kept watch by my night stand While I dozed off to dreamland
A friend and protector of mine His name was Optimus Prime
While my Christmas morning treasures were well short of Optimus Prime, (I got a Roy Rogers cap gun and holster set), the feelings were the same. A gift that was all mine, something hoped for, realized. I wore that holster set with pride.
While early morning gift-openings are memories to treasure, Wilkerson presents a very adult seasonal dimension in “We’re Going.” The weather is cold and bleak but a friend in the hospital “With cancer / Lurking like a blizzard,” needs pastoral care:
It was a 40-mile trip One way Knowing by the time You head home It will be twice as white Twice as slick Twice as dangerous
The poem “Still” uses the word still, in skillful repetition to describe the longings of a soldier faraway. The haunting violence of war permeates the poet’s psyche thinks of his beloved knowing “that she loves me so / and she’s waiting, still.”
Variety pervades this exquisitely produced volume. Seven winter haiku are salt and peppered throughout”
#1 snow angels frozen I look where our hands once touched just three days ago
#3 pup sees first winter she doesn’t need to be told how to play in snow
#6 winter fisherman drills at a woman’s frozen heart still too thick
Wilkerson’s poems are written primarily in free verse. There are prose poems, short-syllabic poems, poems that are centered on the page, poems with a wide range of stanza configurations, as well as a lovely poem which honors Jim’s faith-tradition titled, “Did You Know,” Here’s an excerpt:
Unselfish love Blood poured out for all The red of Christmas.”
Indeed, the deeper meaning of winter is not lost on this budding new talent. Jim Wilkerson has something special when pen and paper meet the seasons of life.Winter Poems is proof-positive of that.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment. Posted December 1, 2025
To Order, author instructs - You send me your book, I’ll send you mine:Carl “Papa” Palmer, 8918 46th Street West, University Place, WA 98466carlpalmer@hotmail.com
Old Mill Road by Carl "Papa" Palmer
Independently Published102 pages
To Order, author instructs - You send me your book, I’ll send you mine:Carl “Papa” Palmer, 8918 46th Street West, University Place, WA 98466carlpalmer@hotmail.com
Review by Michael Escoubas
Imagine yourself a fifty-year-old orphan. The startling circumstances of losing both of his parents, fifteen days apart, as well as his childhood home due to a fire had a tsunami-like effect on Carl Palmer. All traces of his parents’ existence along with any physical evidence of their existence caused a sea change in the poet’s life. The stories and poems in Old Mill Road are Carl’s heartfelt response to preserving the rich heritage of his family, himself, and his Puget Sound environs.
My goal is to show the heart and soul of a distinguished poet using his craft to honor his family and the Pacific Northwest, as only poetry can do.
First off, Carl “Papa” Palmer loves to connect with people. His verse is crisp, colorful, and accessible. No pretense here. Carl drew me in with titles such as: “Amana Memories,” a poem about his mother’s calming voice making magic of words on the page, “perfectly pronouncing six syllable words,” and “Portrait of Helen,” a poem about a lady whose permanent was so perfect that “not a hair was out of place, ever.” I related immediately to these poems because they brought my own youthful images to mind.
Interspersed among the poems are essays that lift the curtain on Carl’s interesting life. One such essay is entitled “May 18th, 1980.” In this remarkable stream of consciousness narrative, Palmer recalls being station in the U.S. Army in Hessen, West Germany, witnessing a cloud of white ash that had crossed the Atlantic ocean after Mt. St. Helens “blew her top” in western Washington state. The cloud landed on his blue BMW! This narrative poem, which contains no punctuation other than commas, is full of colorful commentary on the region: where giant Pacific Octopi reside, Big Foot, aka Sasquatch sightings, legends about underground tunnels burrowed beneath skid row streets for waylaying drunks and placing them on merchant ships heading out to sea. These are just for starters. Readers may skip over some of the poems, but no one should miss this creative gem.
Carl has an innate sense about how to reach the heart. For example, “Harmonica Player” recalls his Dad’s skill on the instrument. He played songs his listeners liked: Camptown Racetrack, Oh Susannah and Red River Valley. He could play German tunes when he felt like it and do a perfect imitation of a train chugging its way along the tracks. Sons and grandsons each received their own Hohner harmonica and beginner instruction book. Such family-binding moments make this collection stand out.
Palmer’s skill with irony is captured in:
“second hand smoke”
retorted with husky voicethrough puffed streamsof freshly used fumes
“just a rumor” raspingan aroma of burnt tar
“not proven” as shepops a breath mintahems her phegm
flips the spent butt afterone last lung filled drag
refreshes her perfumeand reenters the barafter enjoying a quickbreath of clean fresh air
“Act Your Age” is filled with winsome truth. A young girl observes her Dad at leisure watching TV in bare feet, munching on popcorn, drinking chocolate milk straight from the milk carton:
“He stays up late as he wants, eatswhenever and whatever, never hasto get up early for school or workand nobody tells him what to do.”
“I can’t wait until I am an adultso I can be a kid just like my Papa.”
“Poet’s Prayer” is a charming confessional to the Lord. Carl comes clean with God about his numerous deficiencies such as not attending church as often as he should and other acts that deserve heartfelt penance. He says, “I mislead, spin yarns, take false / liberties justified by some self / served poetic license.” But he rests in the sublime faith that whatever may be his shortcomings, he is confident that “in spite of my untruths, / You take care of me, so I guess / we remain on good terms.”
Old Mill Road speaks to me where I live. This delightful collection comes home to me in the poem “Family Values”:
It makes me feel good to see the family,mother, father, son and daughtersitting together on the spread blanket at the parkheads bowed around their picnic lunch, a traditionof saying grace before the meal not often seen,
when they all look up at the same time, laugh andpoint at the tweet just received on their iPhones.
Order your copy from Carl, get a cup of coffee or tea, sit back and simply enjoy.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted December 1, 2025
Imagine yourself a fifty-year-old orphan. The startling circumstances of losing both of his parents, fifteen days apart, as well as his childhood home due to a fire had a tsunami-like effect on Carl Palmer. All traces of his parents’ existence along with any physical evidence of their existence caused a sea change in the poet’s life. The stories and poems in Old Mill Road are Carl’s heartfelt response to preserving the rich heritage of his family, himself, and his Puget Sound environs.
My goal is to show the heart and soul of a distinguished poet using his craft to honor his family and the Pacific Northwest, as only poetry can do.
First off, Carl “Papa” Palmer loves to connect with people. His verse is crisp, colorful, and accessible. No pretense here. Carl drew me in with titles such as: “Amana Memories,” a poem about his mother’s calming voice making magic of words on the page, “perfectly pronouncing six syllable words,” and “Portrait of Helen,” a poem about a lady whose permanent was so perfect that “not a hair was out of place, ever.” I related immediately to these poems because they brought my own youthful images to mind.
Interspersed among the poems are essays that lift the curtain on Carl’s interesting life. One such essay is entitled “May 18th, 1980.” In this remarkable stream of consciousness narrative, Palmer recalls being station in the U.S. Army in Hessen, West Germany, witnessing a cloud of white ash that had crossed the Atlantic ocean after Mt. St. Helens “blew her top” in western Washington state. The cloud landed on his blue BMW! This narrative poem, which contains no punctuation other than commas, is full of colorful commentary on the region: where giant Pacific Octopi reside, Big Foot, aka Sasquatch sightings, legends about underground tunnels burrowed beneath skid row streets for waylaying drunks and placing them on merchant ships heading out to sea. These are just for starters. Readers may skip over some of the poems, but no one should miss this creative gem.
Carl has an innate sense about how to reach the heart. For example, “Harmonica Player” recalls his Dad’s skill on the instrument. He played songs his listeners liked: Camptown Racetrack, Oh Susannah and Red River Valley. He could play German tunes when he felt like it and do a perfect imitation of a train chugging its way along the tracks. Sons and grandsons each received their own Hohner harmonica and beginner instruction book. Such family-binding moments make this collection stand out.
Palmer’s skill with irony is captured in:
“second hand smoke”
retorted with husky voicethrough puffed streamsof freshly used fumes
“just a rumor” raspingan aroma of burnt tar
“not proven” as shepops a breath mintahems her phegm
flips the spent butt afterone last lung filled drag
refreshes her perfumeand reenters the barafter enjoying a quickbreath of clean fresh air
“Act Your Age” is filled with winsome truth. A young girl observes her Dad at leisure watching TV in bare feet, munching on popcorn, drinking chocolate milk straight from the milk carton:
“He stays up late as he wants, eatswhenever and whatever, never hasto get up early for school or workand nobody tells him what to do.”
“I can’t wait until I am an adultso I can be a kid just like my Papa.”
“Poet’s Prayer” is a charming confessional to the Lord. Carl comes clean with God about his numerous deficiencies such as not attending church as often as he should and other acts that deserve heartfelt penance. He says, “I mislead, spin yarns, take false / liberties justified by some self / served poetic license.” But he rests in the sublime faith that whatever may be his shortcomings, he is confident that “in spite of my untruths, / You take care of me, so I guess / we remain on good terms.”
Old Mill Road speaks to me where I live. This delightful collection comes home to me in the poem “Family Values”:
It makes me feel good to see the family,mother, father, son and daughtersitting together on the spread blanket at the parkheads bowed around their picnic lunch, a traditionof saying grace before the meal not often seen,
when they all look up at the same time, laugh andpoint at the tweet just received on their iPhones.
Order your copy from Carl, get a cup of coffee or tea, sit back and simply enjoy.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted December 1, 2025
Garden Tools by David W. Berner
Finishing Line Press, 2025 70 pages
ISBN: 979-8-899990-131-7
Review by jacob erin-cilberto
The opening lines of “Desert Prayer,” the first poem in Garden Tools, give us the perfect opening for this review:
“If I were to swallow the earth, I would taste cinnamon in the desert’s red rocks, where the light catches the edges of the heart, and the table is set for one.”
Yes, the table is set for one, the reader. And reading through this volume of poetry demonstrates how this poet has “swallowed the earth” and through the mouth of his pen echoes all of the flavors of nature and how they have been such a major influence on his poetry.
In “The Last Tulip,” David gives us “from the deep-brown ground comes/ an owl-brown, dying plant, dying for now.” We see summer on its last legs, trying to stretch itself out for just a few more days.
“but there is an uncertain death--- a burning in the night or a slow goodbye without ever opening in the midday sun.”
Perhaps, some of us never quite achieve what we could be in full bloom before fall takes us away.
This poet gave me such an emotional turn in his poem “Workshop.” He dedicates this piece to his father, but the universality with which David writes allows the readers to bring their own experiences and feelings to the works. For me, this poem reminds me so much of my engineer father. A brilliant man in his field, a little less handy at home with his own tools.
“A jigsaw Coping saw Keyhole saw and a bone saw”
Inside, I often smirked because Dad would be determined to do it himself. Most often he would get there after several failed attempts and a barrage of curses to the god of home repairs. Much like Berner’s father:
“He decided long ago he was to be a woodworker a carpenter who made dining room tables, rocking horses, and humidors.”
My father was not that extravagant with his endeavors---but with much of the same result.
David’s poem “Illness” reminded me of my mother’s last couple years.
“What tells us when it’s time to restart a life to shed a skin?”
There was a shedding of skin, but her life was to be restarted in the Heavens above.
“Revival comes In the desperate places Found in the underbelly of sickness.”
And thus, she (my mother) left us to shed our own skins one day.
On the lighter side, David gives us the poem called “Fists.” He reminisces of the boy in the schoolyard always wanting to fight him.
“Running straight to each other as fast as we could embracing with smashing fists.”
Oh, I had such a similar situation. But not being proficient with fists, I often took the brunt of punishment. I had one advantage. I was stronger and could wrestle. So, eventually, I would get tired of getting hit and grab him and put him on the ground, while sitting on top of him until he would cry “Uncle.” He hated being the submissive one.
“I wonder if he remembers”
And often I wondered if years later, he remembered those days.
Another wonderful poem in this book is “For the Writer.” He scribes:
“And on my desk A typewriter sits My journal at its side pen before the page in the mystic I dream of magic”
Such a great use of near rhyme this poet so often uses. All of us writers dream of that magic. We hope that this might occur:
“I forever hammer at the bark in silent night or morning moon my beak against the wood.”
Peck, peck, pecking at the keys with something worthwhile to say.
In “Thinking of Death” the poet speaks of having his sister’s ashes in his car, driving her around the block and that she will hear the music on the radio. And he ends the poem with this line. “I hope someone drives me around when I’m dead.”
I suppose it would be nice to be the passenger after a life of driving ourselves everywhere, including “Crazy.”
In his final poem “December,” he speaks of “coming on winter” and finishes the poem with these appropriate lines:
“in the lattice work of clouds to fall on skeleton reeds of decayed thistles stillness takes hold be silent pause.”
And as Hamlet said “The rest is silence.” David W. Berner’s poetry is concise. He wastes not one word. And it is much more than just reading. It is the experience of seeing and feeling nature and how that nature nurtures us and provides a perfect setting for the portraits we paint of our own lives.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: jacob erin-cilberto is author of 26 books of poetry, his most recent being A Jersey Shore in Ryegate. He teaches at John Logan College and conducts workshops at Heartland Writers Guild, Southern Illinois Writers Guild and Union County Writers Guild.
Posted November 1, 2025
The opening lines of “Desert Prayer,” the first poem in Garden Tools, give us the perfect opening for this review:
“If I were to swallow the earth, I would taste cinnamon in the desert’s red rocks, where the light catches the edges of the heart, and the table is set for one.”
Yes, the table is set for one, the reader. And reading through this volume of poetry demonstrates how this poet has “swallowed the earth” and through the mouth of his pen echoes all of the flavors of nature and how they have been such a major influence on his poetry.
In “The Last Tulip,” David gives us “from the deep-brown ground comes/ an owl-brown, dying plant, dying for now.” We see summer on its last legs, trying to stretch itself out for just a few more days.
“but there is an uncertain death--- a burning in the night or a slow goodbye without ever opening in the midday sun.”
Perhaps, some of us never quite achieve what we could be in full bloom before fall takes us away.
This poet gave me such an emotional turn in his poem “Workshop.” He dedicates this piece to his father, but the universality with which David writes allows the readers to bring their own experiences and feelings to the works. For me, this poem reminds me so much of my engineer father. A brilliant man in his field, a little less handy at home with his own tools.
“A jigsaw Coping saw Keyhole saw and a bone saw”
Inside, I often smirked because Dad would be determined to do it himself. Most often he would get there after several failed attempts and a barrage of curses to the god of home repairs. Much like Berner’s father:
“He decided long ago he was to be a woodworker a carpenter who made dining room tables, rocking horses, and humidors.”
My father was not that extravagant with his endeavors---but with much of the same result.
David’s poem “Illness” reminded me of my mother’s last couple years.
“What tells us when it’s time to restart a life to shed a skin?”
There was a shedding of skin, but her life was to be restarted in the Heavens above.
“Revival comes In the desperate places Found in the underbelly of sickness.”
And thus, she (my mother) left us to shed our own skins one day.
On the lighter side, David gives us the poem called “Fists.” He reminisces of the boy in the schoolyard always wanting to fight him.
“Running straight to each other as fast as we could embracing with smashing fists.”
Oh, I had such a similar situation. But not being proficient with fists, I often took the brunt of punishment. I had one advantage. I was stronger and could wrestle. So, eventually, I would get tired of getting hit and grab him and put him on the ground, while sitting on top of him until he would cry “Uncle.” He hated being the submissive one.
“I wonder if he remembers”
And often I wondered if years later, he remembered those days.
Another wonderful poem in this book is “For the Writer.” He scribes:
“And on my desk A typewriter sits My journal at its side pen before the page in the mystic I dream of magic”
Such a great use of near rhyme this poet so often uses. All of us writers dream of that magic. We hope that this might occur:
“I forever hammer at the bark in silent night or morning moon my beak against the wood.”
Peck, peck, pecking at the keys with something worthwhile to say.
In “Thinking of Death” the poet speaks of having his sister’s ashes in his car, driving her around the block and that she will hear the music on the radio. And he ends the poem with this line. “I hope someone drives me around when I’m dead.”
I suppose it would be nice to be the passenger after a life of driving ourselves everywhere, including “Crazy.”
In his final poem “December,” he speaks of “coming on winter” and finishes the poem with these appropriate lines:
“in the lattice work of clouds to fall on skeleton reeds of decayed thistles stillness takes hold be silent pause.”
And as Hamlet said “The rest is silence.” David W. Berner’s poetry is concise. He wastes not one word. And it is much more than just reading. It is the experience of seeing and feeling nature and how that nature nurtures us and provides a perfect setting for the portraits we paint of our own lives.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: jacob erin-cilberto is author of 26 books of poetry, his most recent being A Jersey Shore in Ryegate. He teaches at John Logan College and conducts workshops at Heartland Writers Guild, Southern Illinois Writers Guild and Union County Writers Guild.
Posted November 1, 2025
Memory Coin: Poems by Sheila Elliott
Highland Park Poetry Press, 2025 65 pages
ISBN: 979-8999712202Review by Michael Escoubas
It is little wonder that Memory Coin, by Sheila Elliott, was awarded first place in the prestigious Prairie State Poetry Prize competition for best first or second collection. As competition judge Jan Chronister states: “Sheila Elliott meditates on everyday places and events that connect us.” When I reflect upon my reasons for writing and reading poetry, that statement by Chronister, says it all! A poem must capture my interest in the telling moments of life, in the things, people, and places, which define who I am. Elliott understands “places of the heart.” My goal is to show several examples that evidence Sheila Elliott’s heart, a heart that reaches mine.
Notes on Titles and Structure:
My prereading of Memory Coin immediately captures my attention by the poet’s skill with titles.“Tea Leaves and Cards in the Reliance Building.” What’s this all about, I wonder. Then I encounter, “Gentle as Ice,” . . . How can ice be gentle? “Enduring Uncertainty,” “Prescient Frost,” “The Rules of 2 A.M. Conversations,” and “Let’s Meet Beneath the Clock.” I wonder what goes on under the clock!
Elliott is a free-verse poet, as well as a poet skilled in rhyme. Her free-verse style is never boring because she uses quatrains, couplets, innovative lineage, and interesting stanza breaks. A few poems run solid. “In Praise of Ordinary Things,” is a well-written prose poem. “Autumn Leaves, Last Leaves,” is an example of inventive line endings and nicely executed rhyme:
Autumn leaves, last leaves, winnowed boughs, thin-sleeved, begin tossing, they heave but in the end, cleave. To win a chance is to believe there’s a sense to this weave and spin.
But darkness lets us see how strong light can be, trees, trim— they’re set sparsely yet perfectly, within the space they’re meant to be, sentinels, with exacting gravity within.
It is Elliott’s superb use of the imagination that stands out. Is Nature harboring within its seasonal cycles something we humans should notice about ourselves? If there is an issue here, Elliott does not do our work for us. Like any great poet, she is bold enough NOT to solve a problem. She trusts her readers to ponder for a little more depth.
Notes on Nature and the Human Condition
Sheila Elliott paints pictures with words. Most good poets do this. However, Elliott excels. Among the harder things to do in life is to wait. In a mere five couplets she portrays a merger between Nature and the human spirit:
What it Means to Wait
Where ridges cascade into hollows, there winter reveals itself. Aging snow ponds, and gray shadows, thinner than the twining trees above, lay scattered discreetly. There, wind now and forever unseen, whispers something about the meaning of waiting.
I can see it. An intimation of desolation, long-standing snow, unremitting gray interacting with barren boughs, the incessant wind dominating the scene, its whispers portending change, the unnamed (but assumed) human presence . . . waiting, waiting, waiting.
“Coulda’ . . . Shoulda’ ” draws a corollary between natural-world phenomenon and the human spirit. Elliott eloquently captures an anomaly of human experience.
Never wanted things this way, but no one tells you that the slick, secret skin of the great and narrow road can be followed for too long, or how ice you can’t even see can snap back at you like a rubber band, spin you ‘round, slow you down, then set you face-to-face so you’ve got to meet the golden eyes of the demon that is the wish for the past’s revision.
How pointedly this poem speaks to real-world issues for this reviewer.
“Her Passing” is an elegy written for the poet’s mother. It is an unconventional sonnet which scans: aaa / bbb / ccc / ddd / ee. However, it is the tenderness felt by Elliott that speaks to my heart.
When it came to the end, when we were sure she wouldn’t mend, I didn’t try to pretend— It was me crossing in a way, too, leaving with reluctance, away and through, though I had a life’s work still to do.
Years have gone by since that night. I’ve seen now, death is an invisible sight, a flat line that intensifies the light. And though she passed when I was grown, time since has surely shown one loss is not to be outgrown. And coping becomes the mask When we’re not up to the task.
One task, dear reader, that you are up to is ordering a copy of Sheila Elliott’s award-winning collection, Money Coin. A mere $15.00 will transport you to a poetry banquet that will satisfy your hunger for spirit-nourishing food.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted November 1, 2025
It is little wonder that Memory Coin, by Sheila Elliott, was awarded first place in the prestigious Prairie State Poetry Prize competition for best first or second collection. As competition judge Jan Chronister states: “Sheila Elliott meditates on everyday places and events that connect us.” When I reflect upon my reasons for writing and reading poetry, that statement by Chronister, says it all! A poem must capture my interest in the telling moments of life, in the things, people, and places, which define who I am. Elliott understands “places of the heart.” My goal is to show several examples that evidence Sheila Elliott’s heart, a heart that reaches mine.
Notes on Titles and Structure:
My prereading of Memory Coin immediately captures my attention by the poet’s skill with titles.“Tea Leaves and Cards in the Reliance Building.” What’s this all about, I wonder. Then I encounter, “Gentle as Ice,” . . . How can ice be gentle? “Enduring Uncertainty,” “Prescient Frost,” “The Rules of 2 A.M. Conversations,” and “Let’s Meet Beneath the Clock.” I wonder what goes on under the clock!
Elliott is a free-verse poet, as well as a poet skilled in rhyme. Her free-verse style is never boring because she uses quatrains, couplets, innovative lineage, and interesting stanza breaks. A few poems run solid. “In Praise of Ordinary Things,” is a well-written prose poem. “Autumn Leaves, Last Leaves,” is an example of inventive line endings and nicely executed rhyme:
Autumn leaves, last leaves, winnowed boughs, thin-sleeved, begin tossing, they heave but in the end, cleave. To win a chance is to believe there’s a sense to this weave and spin.
But darkness lets us see how strong light can be, trees, trim— they’re set sparsely yet perfectly, within the space they’re meant to be, sentinels, with exacting gravity within.
It is Elliott’s superb use of the imagination that stands out. Is Nature harboring within its seasonal cycles something we humans should notice about ourselves? If there is an issue here, Elliott does not do our work for us. Like any great poet, she is bold enough NOT to solve a problem. She trusts her readers to ponder for a little more depth.
Notes on Nature and the Human Condition
Sheila Elliott paints pictures with words. Most good poets do this. However, Elliott excels. Among the harder things to do in life is to wait. In a mere five couplets she portrays a merger between Nature and the human spirit:
What it Means to Wait
Where ridges cascade into hollows, there winter reveals itself. Aging snow ponds, and gray shadows, thinner than the twining trees above, lay scattered discreetly. There, wind now and forever unseen, whispers something about the meaning of waiting.
I can see it. An intimation of desolation, long-standing snow, unremitting gray interacting with barren boughs, the incessant wind dominating the scene, its whispers portending change, the unnamed (but assumed) human presence . . . waiting, waiting, waiting.
“Coulda’ . . . Shoulda’ ” draws a corollary between natural-world phenomenon and the human spirit. Elliott eloquently captures an anomaly of human experience.
Never wanted things this way, but no one tells you that the slick, secret skin of the great and narrow road can be followed for too long, or how ice you can’t even see can snap back at you like a rubber band, spin you ‘round, slow you down, then set you face-to-face so you’ve got to meet the golden eyes of the demon that is the wish for the past’s revision.
How pointedly this poem speaks to real-world issues for this reviewer.
“Her Passing” is an elegy written for the poet’s mother. It is an unconventional sonnet which scans: aaa / bbb / ccc / ddd / ee. However, it is the tenderness felt by Elliott that speaks to my heart.
When it came to the end, when we were sure she wouldn’t mend, I didn’t try to pretend— It was me crossing in a way, too, leaving with reluctance, away and through, though I had a life’s work still to do.
Years have gone by since that night. I’ve seen now, death is an invisible sight, a flat line that intensifies the light. And though she passed when I was grown, time since has surely shown one loss is not to be outgrown. And coping becomes the mask When we’re not up to the task.
One task, dear reader, that you are up to is ordering a copy of Sheila Elliott’s award-winning collection, Money Coin. A mere $15.00 will transport you to a poetry banquet that will satisfy your hunger for spirit-nourishing food.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted November 1, 2025
Eject City by Jason Morphew
Poets Wear Prada, 2025 88 pages
ISBN: 978-1946116291Review by Patricia Carragon
In Eject City, we enter a fragmented world of pain and grief, bottled up for years. Unlike fine wine, pain and grief simmer in the darkness of unsettled family histories that refuse to stay buried, a monster that needs to rage before it is set free from its crypt. Morphew is not afraid to dig into his past, to do his own “shadow work.” He transforms his agony into art. An art form that is helping him heal.
In “Bell’s Palsy,” Morphew suffered a facial paralysis during a Slash concert in Laurel Canyon. This poem explores a sudden loss of control in both language and form. He writes in two columns, where meanings can either be read across or down. But the intensity cannot be camouflaged. We know he is depressed with the current political situation and his own. The concert setting underscores this tension—a public performance colliding with a private crisis, joy disrupted by sudden vulnerability. In “Bell’s Palsy,” poetry itself becomes a reflection of the body’s betrayals and the outside world.
Where “Bell’s Palsy” is about physical disruption, “Suzanne” delves into the intimate world of memory and shame. The poem emerges from a dream state. A dream so unsettling, like a reality dosed with drugs and an unraveling marriage. The poem’s disorientation is internal, lodged in voice and syntax. The backstory behind the poem is about Morphew’s cousin Barry Morphew, who has been re-arrested for killing Suzanne Morphew and is currently in prison, awaiting trial. Beyond the history, “Suzanne” captures grief, absence, and loss in one of his strongest poems, leaving only unresolved questions to haunt the mind. In “Now that’s my father’s ash,” Morphew writes about his heartfelt experience—carrying his father’s ashes in a bag, alongside a tube of toothpaste—a bizarre contrast of an everyday item versus the human remains of a living person. Unlike the formal experimentation of “Bell’s Palsy” or the fragmentary drift of “Suzanne,” this poem is blunt simplicity but has power in its context. Death goes beyond the grief of losing a loved one. Death is a part of life, like brushing your teeth. That legacy and mortality are never distant abstractions; they live among us, pressing against our daily lives.
Throughout Eject City, Morphew embraces life not as an accident but as a method. The collection’s wide range of styles—shape poems, elegiac lyrics, fragmentary meditations—feels less like eclecticism and more like a deliberate embrace of instability. The book suggests that erratic ruptures are the truest interpretation of experience. Bodies fail, families disintegrate, memories blur, and yet poetry persists amid the broken events of life. Morphew’s background as both a poet and songwriter resonates throughout the collection. Some poems carry a musical cadence; others resist rhythm altogether. Morphew is unafraid to let his poems falter, stutter, or collapse into silence. He is a true artist—a virtuoso who is unafraid to take risks. He transforms his despair and life’s experiences into art—whether of body, of heart, or of legacy. The collection is difficult, inventive, and deeply honest. It will not leave its readers unchanged but may make you think about your trail of shadows.
About Jason Morphew - Jason Morphew started life in a mobile home in Pike County, Arkansas. Of his debut collection, dead boy, The Washington Post says Morphew’s “sharp intelligence makes the poems pop.” His writing has appeared in The Daily Beast, Los Angeles Review of Books, Seneca Review, and other places. As a singer-songwriter, Morphew has released albums on Ba Da Bing, Max, Brassland, and Unread Records. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at Stanford Online High School.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Patricia Carragon received a 2025 Best of the Net nomination for her haiku, “Cherry Blossoms,” from Poets Wear Prada. She hosts Brownstone Poets and is the editor-in-chief of its annual anthology. She is the editor of Sense & Sensibility Haiku Journal and listed on the poet registry for The Haiku Foundation. Carragon's jazz poetry collection, Stranger on the Shore, from Human Error Publishing, is forthcoming this year. Her latest novel is Angel Fire (Alien Buddha Press, 2020). Books from Poets Wear Prada are Meowku (2019) and The Cupcake Chronicles (2017). Her book Innocence is from Finishing Line Press (2017).
Posted November 1, 2025
In Eject City, we enter a fragmented world of pain and grief, bottled up for years. Unlike fine wine, pain and grief simmer in the darkness of unsettled family histories that refuse to stay buried, a monster that needs to rage before it is set free from its crypt. Morphew is not afraid to dig into his past, to do his own “shadow work.” He transforms his agony into art. An art form that is helping him heal.
In “Bell’s Palsy,” Morphew suffered a facial paralysis during a Slash concert in Laurel Canyon. This poem explores a sudden loss of control in both language and form. He writes in two columns, where meanings can either be read across or down. But the intensity cannot be camouflaged. We know he is depressed with the current political situation and his own. The concert setting underscores this tension—a public performance colliding with a private crisis, joy disrupted by sudden vulnerability. In “Bell’s Palsy,” poetry itself becomes a reflection of the body’s betrayals and the outside world.
Where “Bell’s Palsy” is about physical disruption, “Suzanne” delves into the intimate world of memory and shame. The poem emerges from a dream state. A dream so unsettling, like a reality dosed with drugs and an unraveling marriage. The poem’s disorientation is internal, lodged in voice and syntax. The backstory behind the poem is about Morphew’s cousin Barry Morphew, who has been re-arrested for killing Suzanne Morphew and is currently in prison, awaiting trial. Beyond the history, “Suzanne” captures grief, absence, and loss in one of his strongest poems, leaving only unresolved questions to haunt the mind. In “Now that’s my father’s ash,” Morphew writes about his heartfelt experience—carrying his father’s ashes in a bag, alongside a tube of toothpaste—a bizarre contrast of an everyday item versus the human remains of a living person. Unlike the formal experimentation of “Bell’s Palsy” or the fragmentary drift of “Suzanne,” this poem is blunt simplicity but has power in its context. Death goes beyond the grief of losing a loved one. Death is a part of life, like brushing your teeth. That legacy and mortality are never distant abstractions; they live among us, pressing against our daily lives.
Throughout Eject City, Morphew embraces life not as an accident but as a method. The collection’s wide range of styles—shape poems, elegiac lyrics, fragmentary meditations—feels less like eclecticism and more like a deliberate embrace of instability. The book suggests that erratic ruptures are the truest interpretation of experience. Bodies fail, families disintegrate, memories blur, and yet poetry persists amid the broken events of life. Morphew’s background as both a poet and songwriter resonates throughout the collection. Some poems carry a musical cadence; others resist rhythm altogether. Morphew is unafraid to let his poems falter, stutter, or collapse into silence. He is a true artist—a virtuoso who is unafraid to take risks. He transforms his despair and life’s experiences into art—whether of body, of heart, or of legacy. The collection is difficult, inventive, and deeply honest. It will not leave its readers unchanged but may make you think about your trail of shadows.
About Jason Morphew - Jason Morphew started life in a mobile home in Pike County, Arkansas. Of his debut collection, dead boy, The Washington Post says Morphew’s “sharp intelligence makes the poems pop.” His writing has appeared in The Daily Beast, Los Angeles Review of Books, Seneca Review, and other places. As a singer-songwriter, Morphew has released albums on Ba Da Bing, Max, Brassland, and Unread Records. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at Stanford Online High School.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Patricia Carragon received a 2025 Best of the Net nomination for her haiku, “Cherry Blossoms,” from Poets Wear Prada. She hosts Brownstone Poets and is the editor-in-chief of its annual anthology. She is the editor of Sense & Sensibility Haiku Journal and listed on the poet registry for The Haiku Foundation. Carragon's jazz poetry collection, Stranger on the Shore, from Human Error Publishing, is forthcoming this year. Her latest novel is Angel Fire (Alien Buddha Press, 2020). Books from Poets Wear Prada are Meowku (2019) and The Cupcake Chronicles (2017). Her book Innocence is from Finishing Line Press (2017).
Posted November 1, 2025
Darkness Called Us Home by Rosemarie Wurth-Grice
Finishing Line Press, 2025 30 pages
ISBN: 979-8888389898Review by jacob erin-cilberto
I felt conflicted reading this book of poetry. Much sadness enveloped me at the losses suffered by the speaker in these poems. But I also smiled at the incredibly intelligent metaphors that help convey that very grief. And I do love metaphors and express most of my work through them. The cleverness in her lines eases the pain the reader’s heart feels.
In her poem “Vestigial” she writes:
“You gave me memories I could have tucked away Like cherished linens in a cedar-lined chest But you know I could never fold anything neatly”
She seems to indicate, “I cannot remember you without wrinkles in the creases.”
In “Sunday Morning Self-Realization,” a poem written on legal pads that her dog chewed on but found “unpalatable,” she shares the following:
“I walked across the pasture and wrote a list of grief-bent metaphors.”
And in another poem, she advanced these lines “In my other life I couldn’t swim and sailed the Titanic.”
So, is she meaning “why would my heart go on” after such losses or is she saying she must go on and swim against the current of despair? So many questions are raised by Wurth-Grice’s poetry, and she challenges us readers to answer them for ourselves when pertaining to our own griefs.
And how eerie is that metaphor relating to the Titanic?
She speaks of titles of poems she will never write. I cannot help but think of Plath, Sexton, Berryman, O’Hara and others who died too soon and wonder how much was left in their poetic souls. How much poetry from all of these artists did we miss? Were they written out or was there more to come?
Her poem “An October Pantoum of Sorts,” I felt a Plathian touch. Rosemarie speaks of“a solitary bee is sleeping/…/ Your Keeper has died?” Plath often wrote about keeping bees and how they turned on her and she was stung all over.
In “Winter Rain,” the speaker is listening
“to the sky shedding wet shades of grey a thousand cat feet tromping on the eaves to sit by a fire solitary but content in warm sylvan silence.”
So, does the rain and loneliness cause us to dwell on sadness? Or do we come to a comfortable agreement with it and find contentment in the memories?
“In the soft warmth of your flesh gone You have a place but your place is not here,”
I wonder where that place is to where our loved ones have gone. I just hope they are sitting comfortably by a fire, smiling contentedly and thinking of us, the ones they left behind.
Worth-Grice writes such relatable poetry. We take this journey with her, and it is a sharing of feelings and memories between poet and reader.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: jacob erin-cilberto is author of 26 books of poetry, his most recent being A Jersey Shore in Ryegate. He teaches at John Logan College and conducts workshops at Heartland Writers Guild, Southern Illinois Writers Guild and Union County Writers Guild. Posted November 1, 2025
I felt conflicted reading this book of poetry. Much sadness enveloped me at the losses suffered by the speaker in these poems. But I also smiled at the incredibly intelligent metaphors that help convey that very grief. And I do love metaphors and express most of my work through them. The cleverness in her lines eases the pain the reader’s heart feels.
In her poem “Vestigial” she writes:
“You gave me memories I could have tucked away Like cherished linens in a cedar-lined chest But you know I could never fold anything neatly”
She seems to indicate, “I cannot remember you without wrinkles in the creases.”
In “Sunday Morning Self-Realization,” a poem written on legal pads that her dog chewed on but found “unpalatable,” she shares the following:
“I walked across the pasture and wrote a list of grief-bent metaphors.”
And in another poem, she advanced these lines “In my other life I couldn’t swim and sailed the Titanic.”
So, is she meaning “why would my heart go on” after such losses or is she saying she must go on and swim against the current of despair? So many questions are raised by Wurth-Grice’s poetry, and she challenges us readers to answer them for ourselves when pertaining to our own griefs.
And how eerie is that metaphor relating to the Titanic?
She speaks of titles of poems she will never write. I cannot help but think of Plath, Sexton, Berryman, O’Hara and others who died too soon and wonder how much was left in their poetic souls. How much poetry from all of these artists did we miss? Were they written out or was there more to come?
Her poem “An October Pantoum of Sorts,” I felt a Plathian touch. Rosemarie speaks of“a solitary bee is sleeping/…/ Your Keeper has died?” Plath often wrote about keeping bees and how they turned on her and she was stung all over.
In “Winter Rain,” the speaker is listening
“to the sky shedding wet shades of grey a thousand cat feet tromping on the eaves to sit by a fire solitary but content in warm sylvan silence.”
So, does the rain and loneliness cause us to dwell on sadness? Or do we come to a comfortable agreement with it and find contentment in the memories?
“In the soft warmth of your flesh gone You have a place but your place is not here,”
I wonder where that place is to where our loved ones have gone. I just hope they are sitting comfortably by a fire, smiling contentedly and thinking of us, the ones they left behind.
Worth-Grice writes such relatable poetry. We take this journey with her, and it is a sharing of feelings and memories between poet and reader.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: jacob erin-cilberto is author of 26 books of poetry, his most recent being A Jersey Shore in Ryegate. He teaches at John Logan College and conducts workshops at Heartland Writers Guild, Southern Illinois Writers Guild and Union County Writers Guild. Posted November 1, 2025
Gentle Grasp by Laura Daniels
Kelsay Books, 2024 62 pages
ISBN: 978-1639806638Review by jacob erin-cilberto
It is not easy to make that journey in life that might end in contentment. But Laura Daniels writes poetry that moves us with a Gentle Grasp on our minds and hearts. And we find ourselves wanting and needing to go along with her.
In her piece titled “Anna/An Inventory,” Daniels shows the subject as “not a busybody when she looks out the window; she’s neighborhood-watching… she makes sense of her world through words. She writes to let out all that is contained but churning to be released.”This poetry book does just that. It shows a great release in the form of “just being.” The key to peace in life is “just being.”
In “Come Out of the Shadow” she talks of how “happiness evaporates overnight/ transformed light into darkness/ Cimmeria garden flora/ unable to root, nothing/ grew in shadow.” Sometimes we seem to put ourselves into our own asylum with “understanding sought/ understanding withered.” But “eventually in illumination/ finally got grounding/ began to bloom.” Is she saying we need to work on ourselves to get to that place where we are “just being”? Perhaps, yes. And we reach that point, then, “roots spread/ roots deepened.”
In her poem, “Centering” she writes: “to absorb those hard tough bits (of life?) before it’s too late”And later in the poem she expresses ”I want to look away ignore what’s coming.”
But “We grasp/ we grieve/we gaze/ at the sunset/ …/ just listening/ accepting/ being.”
There are moments in life when we may wonder whether going on is something we want to do. In “Reflection: A Golden Shovel,” she shares: “In the morning the sun tried to shine joy into a mirror that sits alone. Its reflection isn’t something I want shared.”
In our younger, uneven years, we have so much uncertainty as to who we want to be, what we really are, how much we could achieve. Expectations pile on top of expectations, on top of expectations. All that is what others need us to be in order for them to be content. But Laura’s poetry helps us to find a much smarter course in life.In her “Poem at Sixty,” she writes: “once I slept like a motherboard waking up freshly restored to factory specifications that was before my warranty expired. and the factory recall can they even find the part?”
Can they find the part? Can’t fix the car without the part. Can’t fix ourselves without the part. But what if the part is not something tangible or concrete? What if the part is more of a notion of an idea?
What if we are simply “beauty/ mending/cracked cup” put back together by us “Simply/ being”? What if we could embrace the wonderfully sane philosophy of Laura Daniels’ poetry. And then maybe we would be: “Stoking others’ courageous inner fires knowing these qualities live in all.”
Laura Daniels’ poetry is realistic but so hopeful.
In “Centering” she leaves us with this thought: “here’s hoping heaven’s a lot like love”
If we can find ourselves “just being” perhaps it will be. Read this book and find where your center lies, your inner peace; this author may help you with that journey of discovery.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: jacob erin-cilberto is author of 25 books of poetry, his most recent being A Journeyman’s Poems. He teaches at John Logan College and conducts workshops at Heartland Writers Guild, Southern Illinois Writers Guild and Union County Writers Guild.
Posted October 1, 2025
It is not easy to make that journey in life that might end in contentment. But Laura Daniels writes poetry that moves us with a Gentle Grasp on our minds and hearts. And we find ourselves wanting and needing to go along with her.
In her piece titled “Anna/An Inventory,” Daniels shows the subject as “not a busybody when she looks out the window; she’s neighborhood-watching… she makes sense of her world through words. She writes to let out all that is contained but churning to be released.”This poetry book does just that. It shows a great release in the form of “just being.” The key to peace in life is “just being.”
In “Come Out of the Shadow” she talks of how “happiness evaporates overnight/ transformed light into darkness/ Cimmeria garden flora/ unable to root, nothing/ grew in shadow.” Sometimes we seem to put ourselves into our own asylum with “understanding sought/ understanding withered.” But “eventually in illumination/ finally got grounding/ began to bloom.” Is she saying we need to work on ourselves to get to that place where we are “just being”? Perhaps, yes. And we reach that point, then, “roots spread/ roots deepened.”
In her poem, “Centering” she writes: “to absorb those hard tough bits (of life?) before it’s too late”And later in the poem she expresses ”I want to look away ignore what’s coming.”
But “We grasp/ we grieve/we gaze/ at the sunset/ …/ just listening/ accepting/ being.”
There are moments in life when we may wonder whether going on is something we want to do. In “Reflection: A Golden Shovel,” she shares: “In the morning the sun tried to shine joy into a mirror that sits alone. Its reflection isn’t something I want shared.”
In our younger, uneven years, we have so much uncertainty as to who we want to be, what we really are, how much we could achieve. Expectations pile on top of expectations, on top of expectations. All that is what others need us to be in order for them to be content. But Laura’s poetry helps us to find a much smarter course in life.In her “Poem at Sixty,” she writes: “once I slept like a motherboard waking up freshly restored to factory specifications that was before my warranty expired. and the factory recall can they even find the part?”
Can they find the part? Can’t fix the car without the part. Can’t fix ourselves without the part. But what if the part is not something tangible or concrete? What if the part is more of a notion of an idea?
What if we are simply “beauty/ mending/cracked cup” put back together by us “Simply/ being”? What if we could embrace the wonderfully sane philosophy of Laura Daniels’ poetry. And then maybe we would be: “Stoking others’ courageous inner fires knowing these qualities live in all.”
Laura Daniels’ poetry is realistic but so hopeful.
In “Centering” she leaves us with this thought: “here’s hoping heaven’s a lot like love”
If we can find ourselves “just being” perhaps it will be. Read this book and find where your center lies, your inner peace; this author may help you with that journey of discovery.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: jacob erin-cilberto is author of 25 books of poetry, his most recent being A Journeyman’s Poems. He teaches at John Logan College and conducts workshops at Heartland Writers Guild, Southern Illinois Writers Guild and Union County Writers Guild.
Posted October 1, 2025
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Questions about purchase? Call 847-881-2664
Wondrous Instruction and Advice from Global Poets: How to Write and Publish Moving Poems and Books and Publicize Like a Pro by Charlotte Digregorio
Artful Communicators Press, 2025Softcover: 334 Pages, (27 Chapters) 8.5 X 11 InchesRetail Price, $27.95 (plus 6.25 SH)-check or money orderISBN 978-0-9912139-2-4Order from Artful Communicators Press711 Oak Street, St 310, Winnetka, IL 60093For credit card purchase, contact Ebay distributor of Artful Communicators Press in Winnetka, Illinois. Questions about purchase? Call 847-881-2664Review by Joan Leotta
Promises Kept and More! The things I noticed about this volume were its size— 8.5 by 11—and thick and the broad scope of the title. Then, on the back cover, I read the many enthusiastic endorsements from poets , including the wonderful Roberta Beary, and noted the lengthy list of DiGregorio’s other books.
The title and subtitle set a daunting task before the and reader, promising “wondrous” instruction and advice from around the globe, and in the subtitle, information on how to publish poems that will touch readers, compile those into books, along with tips on publishing, publicity and sales. In addition, as a lagniappe, the volume contains an entire chapbook of poems by Charlotte DiGregorio. Blue Lines, A Poetry Collection forms part of the back matter of the book and serves as an example of what DiGregorio has just taught her readers to do, especially with regard to compiling a collection and producing it. This is not a book with templates of poetic forms. Rather, it is a wholistic approach to the art of poetry—how poems function as an extension of a writer’s creativity, how they work into one’s life, and how writers can share their work, make it known to others , by publishing.
I have long been an admirer of DiGregorio’s work, so I jumped at the chance to read and review this work. Reading this book, I benefit from her advice and have been inspired to go in various new directions with my own work. Just as a small example, in the front of the book DiGregorio offers quotes from many writers on creativity, this line of hers stood out for me: “each month I make it a point to read the work of a poet I’ve never read before to inspire and to expand my poetry knowledge.” She adds that reading –poets, poetry, and other kinds of literature music, theatre, dance, are also ways to improve one’s own work. She also advises immersion in other art forms, in nature, in life itself, including exploring new cultures, as ways to “rev-up” one’s poetic engine, not simply to find new topics but also to see the world from new perspectives. She says that the broader our interests the more avenues you have for creating poems. She advises readers to expand their reading beyond poetry, too and knows how this can inspire writing of yours. She devotes an entire chapter on how to think like a writer.
She does offers a deep dive into haiku, senryu, and tanka—three forms that she writes in most often and from her perspective are forms that are champions at combining wisdom and heart, She notes that finding healing and wisdom and learning to appreciate life’s moments which are an innate part of these forms. Haiku in particular is about capturing the moment, rooted in Zen Buddhism it teaches gratitude and both haiku and senryu bring our inner selves to the surface—to go onto paper.
DiGregorio is not content with simply getting a person to write. She also offers practical advice on preparing for poetry readings, forming a critique group, how to conduct a critique group, how to deal with rejection, plan a book of your own, and publish then publicize the work. When speaking of rejection she offers the experience of award-winning poet (in several forms) Roberta Beary (USA and Ireland) who had a small piece rejected several times but kept submitting it. That same poem won the International Kusamakura competition (2025) in Japan! Persistence pays.
DiGregorio has not only fulfilled the promises made by the title, but thanks to the included book of poems and the lists of comments made by numerous poets on creativity and other topics, and the careful, example-laden structure of the book, she has exceeded my expectations. Although just having advice from Charlotte herself would be amazing, she offers points of view from all over the world on the topics she tackles in this book, which are what increases its value immensely. DiGregorio is the author of nine books, including poetry collections and how-to’s on various aspects of writing, publishing, and selling books. DiGregorio is also a noted speaker and teacher who has received more than four score poetry awards and has been honored by the Governor of Illinois for her lifelong literary achievements. Serving others with her talents includes past served as VP of the Haiku Society of America and working as the regional coordinator of the International Woman’s Writing Guild.
Because of its holistic approach and conversational tone which open the door to deeper thinking for both a novice writer and the more experienced wordsmith without being overly complicated or too simple, I was not surprised to learn that this book has already been adopted as a supplemental text at several universities. This is a book that belongs on every teacher’s desk, on the desk of every student of poetry, the nightstand of every practicing poet, and in the TBR pile of everyone who is even thinking about becoming a poet. In fact, upon finishing the book I moved it to the side of my desk where it will repose as a reference and source of creative “jump starting” when I need it. Two of the master writers she quotes remind us, “The pen is the tongue of the mind” (Cervantes) and advise “Who dares nothing need hope for nothing”(Friedrich Schiller German poet and playwright).
Continuing to learn, aspire to inspire, develop a readership to keep you motivated—three bits of advice from Charlotte I hope to apply to my work daily. Reading it is time well spent. Referring to it often, a joy.
Thank you, Charlotte, for writing this book.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Joan Leotta is an author and story performer. Her work was nominated for Pushcart and Best of Net in 2022. Publications include Feathers on Stone poetry chapbook (Mainstreet Rag Press) and Languid Lusciousness with Lemon (Finishing Line Press).
Posted October 1, 2025
Promises Kept and More! The things I noticed about this volume were its size— 8.5 by 11—and thick and the broad scope of the title. Then, on the back cover, I read the many enthusiastic endorsements from poets , including the wonderful Roberta Beary, and noted the lengthy list of DiGregorio’s other books.
The title and subtitle set a daunting task before the and reader, promising “wondrous” instruction and advice from around the globe, and in the subtitle, information on how to publish poems that will touch readers, compile those into books, along with tips on publishing, publicity and sales. In addition, as a lagniappe, the volume contains an entire chapbook of poems by Charlotte DiGregorio. Blue Lines, A Poetry Collection forms part of the back matter of the book and serves as an example of what DiGregorio has just taught her readers to do, especially with regard to compiling a collection and producing it. This is not a book with templates of poetic forms. Rather, it is a wholistic approach to the art of poetry—how poems function as an extension of a writer’s creativity, how they work into one’s life, and how writers can share their work, make it known to others , by publishing.
I have long been an admirer of DiGregorio’s work, so I jumped at the chance to read and review this work. Reading this book, I benefit from her advice and have been inspired to go in various new directions with my own work. Just as a small example, in the front of the book DiGregorio offers quotes from many writers on creativity, this line of hers stood out for me: “each month I make it a point to read the work of a poet I’ve never read before to inspire and to expand my poetry knowledge.” She adds that reading –poets, poetry, and other kinds of literature music, theatre, dance, are also ways to improve one’s own work. She also advises immersion in other art forms, in nature, in life itself, including exploring new cultures, as ways to “rev-up” one’s poetic engine, not simply to find new topics but also to see the world from new perspectives. She says that the broader our interests the more avenues you have for creating poems. She advises readers to expand their reading beyond poetry, too and knows how this can inspire writing of yours. She devotes an entire chapter on how to think like a writer.
She does offers a deep dive into haiku, senryu, and tanka—three forms that she writes in most often and from her perspective are forms that are champions at combining wisdom and heart, She notes that finding healing and wisdom and learning to appreciate life’s moments which are an innate part of these forms. Haiku in particular is about capturing the moment, rooted in Zen Buddhism it teaches gratitude and both haiku and senryu bring our inner selves to the surface—to go onto paper.
DiGregorio is not content with simply getting a person to write. She also offers practical advice on preparing for poetry readings, forming a critique group, how to conduct a critique group, how to deal with rejection, plan a book of your own, and publish then publicize the work. When speaking of rejection she offers the experience of award-winning poet (in several forms) Roberta Beary (USA and Ireland) who had a small piece rejected several times but kept submitting it. That same poem won the International Kusamakura competition (2025) in Japan! Persistence pays.
DiGregorio has not only fulfilled the promises made by the title, but thanks to the included book of poems and the lists of comments made by numerous poets on creativity and other topics, and the careful, example-laden structure of the book, she has exceeded my expectations. Although just having advice from Charlotte herself would be amazing, she offers points of view from all over the world on the topics she tackles in this book, which are what increases its value immensely. DiGregorio is the author of nine books, including poetry collections and how-to’s on various aspects of writing, publishing, and selling books. DiGregorio is also a noted speaker and teacher who has received more than four score poetry awards and has been honored by the Governor of Illinois for her lifelong literary achievements. Serving others with her talents includes past served as VP of the Haiku Society of America and working as the regional coordinator of the International Woman’s Writing Guild.
Because of its holistic approach and conversational tone which open the door to deeper thinking for both a novice writer and the more experienced wordsmith without being overly complicated or too simple, I was not surprised to learn that this book has already been adopted as a supplemental text at several universities. This is a book that belongs on every teacher’s desk, on the desk of every student of poetry, the nightstand of every practicing poet, and in the TBR pile of everyone who is even thinking about becoming a poet. In fact, upon finishing the book I moved it to the side of my desk where it will repose as a reference and source of creative “jump starting” when I need it. Two of the master writers she quotes remind us, “The pen is the tongue of the mind” (Cervantes) and advise “Who dares nothing need hope for nothing”(Friedrich Schiller German poet and playwright).
Continuing to learn, aspire to inspire, develop a readership to keep you motivated—three bits of advice from Charlotte I hope to apply to my work daily. Reading it is time well spent. Referring to it often, a joy.
Thank you, Charlotte, for writing this book.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Joan Leotta is an author and story performer. Her work was nominated for Pushcart and Best of Net in 2022. Publications include Feathers on Stone poetry chapbook (Mainstreet Rag Press) and Languid Lusciousness with Lemon (Finishing Line Press).
Posted October 1, 2025
The Songs of Summer: Poems About Baseball Tom Erickson & Ed Werstein, Editors
Water’s Edge Press106 pages ISBN 978-1-952526-31-2https://www.watersedgepress.com/product/the-songs-of-summer-poems-about-baseball/Review by Lois Baer Barr
I am not a serious fan of baseball. I went to bed when the Cubs were tied with the Indians in the 2016 World Series. There was a plane to catch at Midway early the next morning, so I didn’t find out that the curse had been broken until I got to Harry Caray’s for breakfast.
So, why am I reviewing The Songs of Summer: Poems About Baseball? Poetry! I am a sucker for good poetry that lifts into the air like a long ball heading over the ivy-covered wall. This anthology includes poets from the Midwest and from around the world and is full of fast balls, curve balls and pop flies that seem to hang in the air endlessly. It celebrates cherished memories, the rituals of our lives, and the “The Friendly Confines” that baseball offers us. With a wide variety of forms, it offers the rhythm of the seasons, a welcome dose of humor as well as the serious side of playing baseball.
Many of the poems in this anthology are about relationships. Sometimes Baseball nurtures and strengthen family ties. This collection includes the voices of women as players and spectators. Jocelyn Boor celebrates an intergenerational tie in “Baseball for Girls:” My grandpa took me to baseball games/When I was three years old. The Rockford Peaches./Instead of popcorn/I wanted to play.” Peggy Trojan speaks of the sacrifice involved in being a “Baseball Mom,” from “Little League to high school varsity.” But she did not do that for the love of the game:, “I came to watch you.” In Maggie Capettini’s lyrical remembrance, “Dad’s AM Radio,” not only does baseball create family ties but it also ties the city of Chicago to rural America. “it still sounded as though/they were inside a tin can,/talking to us through a child’s play/ telephone of empty soup and a string—/somehow synchronously distant/and intimate.” For some relationships, baseball was the only vehicle for communication. In Jan Chronister’s “ A Game to Remember” the poet reveals, “… the only year the Braves won the World Series./That was the only day my dad spent time with me alone.”
For others baseball brings back bitter memories. The loss of a son, a promising player making his way up the ranks playing in Kenosha and Cedar Rapids is achingly recalled after a ballgame in Gregory Zeck’s "Boys Forever Blues."
Naturally, there are many poems about the heroes of the game from Shohei Ohtani (Bill Cushing’s “samurai in cleats”) to Willie Mays. Roberto Clemente’s fateful flight to Nicaragua to deliver relief to earthquake victims is described in a poem by James P. Roberts. Mario (the Poet) Willis “For the Love of the Game” sings the praises of heroes of the Negro Leagues. Even Mighty Casey is remembered. Paul Buchheit’s “Say Hey” recounts a softball game in which their talented short stop went for a long drive to centerfield, but “…Mikey Casey dropped the ball.”
Then there are also the unsung heroes, players whose baseball cards are only worth $2.00 in David Jibson’s “On Finding a Jack Morris Baseball Card.” And for those of us who like the hoopla better than the game, I appreciated Robert Chicoine’s “Nancy Faust” about the organist who just came out of retirement to play for the Sox 125th anniversary season.
Many of the pieces show baseball’s unique language. In “Ode to Baseball.” Amy Miller’s “Spring: A Catechism” …We speak their Spanish, their Irish names, speak their same strange language: Split-finger. Short Porch. Wheelhouse. Fly.
In Vincent Wixon’s “Town Ball” (11) the nicknames of the players beg to be in a poem: “Carp, Big Daddy, Sam Curt, Pus Arm, Hoss, Billy, Flame Thrower, Bo, Lefty, Flatty, Harmbody…” The Songs of Summer offers a variety of forms from persona poems and narratives to eye-catching haiku and a variety of ways to play the game; sandlot, backyard, major leagues, minor leagues, softball, hardball. Mark Hammerschick’s “Baseball” notes the personal lessons: “it’s how we learn to be human/ scoring, striking out, winning and losing. This game, as the poets remind us, is our national pastime. We do not sacrifice a bull. No gladiators are thrown to the lions. Mario (the Poet) Willis says in “Baseball”: The game still groans to think it was ever used to separate men when these diamonds and green grass were intended to bring us together. (16-17) Playgrounds provide a sacred space within our day-to-day world as Virginia Small relates in “Home Team”: We created a diamond in the space between the bar, the shed and the garage.
Moreover, baseball has a strange effect. It “… stops time when nothing else will” says Pepper Trail in “Upon Being Told, Again, That Baseball is too Slow.” The nostalgia served up in this book is not sappy. Scott Lowery’s “Memorabilia” offers an arresting scrapbook of haiku. For example, and here comes the tarp roll & tumble one small crew versus all that rain
The tough part of being a critic is that like the ump you must call them like you see ‘em. For my taste, the title is too sweet for this collection of poems. A sibilant whisper of soft evenings and soft landings. The cover with its sunlit green grass gives the same message. Yet, thankfully, there are dark poems that reveal baseball’s ugly side. In “Elegy for a Dove,” Darrell Petska’s persona poem, the baseball feels guilt about killing a dove when flung by the pitcher at 100 miles an hour. Tim Krcmarik’s poem, “The Big Hurt,” reminds us of the painful holes that are covered by baseball. pedaling pussy and gin, the north side Blues and the south side Blacks,
all starry-eyed on coffee and speed, lock horns in a bi-annual bloodbath
So, if I nitpick about the title and cover, it is only because this book includes the beauty, the brawn, as well as the ugly black and blue underbelly of the game. Could they have included a persona poem from a battered wife? That is not my call to make. My call on this book is that it is a brilliant display of poetic fireworks and finesse. Each time I pick it up, I discover more to ponder and to relish. If you take me out to the ballgame, I’ll pack this anthology in my pocket.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Lois Baer Barr has published two chapbooks of poetry, Biopoesis and Tracks: Poems on the “L.” She goes to baseball games to eat Crackerjack, drink beer, and yell.
Posted October 1, 2025
In Vincent Wixon’s “Town Ball” (11) the nicknames of the players beg to be in a poem: “Carp, Big Daddy, Sam Curt, Pus Arm, Hoss, Billy, Flame Thrower, Bo, Lefty, Flatty, Harmbody…” The Songs of Summer offers a variety of forms from persona poems and narratives to eye-catching haiku and a variety of ways to play the game; sandlot, backyard, major leagues, minor leagues, softball, hardball. Mark Hammerschick’s “Baseball” notes the personal lessons: “it’s how we learn to be human/ scoring, striking out, winning and losing. This game, as the poets remind us, is our national pastime. We do not sacrifice a bull. No gladiators are thrown to the lions. Mario (the Poet) Willis says in “Baseball”: The game still groans to think it was ever used to separate men when these diamonds and green grass were intended to bring us together. (16-17) Playgrounds provide a sacred space within our day-to-day world as Virginia Small relates in “Home Team”: We created a diamond in the space between the bar, the shed and the garage.
Moreover, baseball has a strange effect. It “… stops time when nothing else will” says Pepper Trail in “Upon Being Told, Again, That Baseball is too Slow.” The nostalgia served up in this book is not sappy. Scott Lowery’s “Memorabilia” offers an arresting scrapbook of haiku. For example, and here comes the tarp roll & tumble one small crew versus all that rain
The tough part of being a critic is that like the ump you must call them like you see ‘em. For my taste, the title is too sweet for this collection of poems. A sibilant whisper of soft evenings and soft landings. The cover with its sunlit green grass gives the same message. Yet, thankfully, there are dark poems that reveal baseball’s ugly side. In “Elegy for a Dove,” Darrell Petska’s persona poem, the baseball feels guilt about killing a dove when flung by the pitcher at 100 miles an hour. Tim Krcmarik’s poem, “The Big Hurt,” reminds us of the painful holes that are covered by baseball. pedaling pussy and gin, the north side Blues and the south side Blacks,
all starry-eyed on coffee and speed, lock horns in a bi-annual bloodbath
So, if I nitpick about the title and cover, it is only because this book includes the beauty, the brawn, as well as the ugly black and blue underbelly of the game. Could they have included a persona poem from a battered wife? That is not my call to make. My call on this book is that it is a brilliant display of poetic fireworks and finesse. Each time I pick it up, I discover more to ponder and to relish. If you take me out to the ballgame, I’ll pack this anthology in my pocket.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Lois Baer Barr has published two chapbooks of poetry, Biopoesis and Tracks: Poems on the “L.” She goes to baseball games to eat Crackerjack, drink beer, and yell.
Posted October 1, 2025
What the House Knows Anthology edited by Diane Lockward
116 poems ~ 210 pagesPrice: $21.00Publisher: Terrapin BooksISBN: 978-1-947896-78-9Reviewed by Michael Escoubas
About houses Robert Frost once wrote, “Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second.” This thought occurred to me as I read the wonderful poems in editor Diane Lockward’s superb anthology, What the House Knows. After all, few things matter more, or have exerted greater influence, for good or bad, upon our lives, than those special places we call home. Lockward, in her excellent introduction, concludes “As you move through the poems . . . listen to what the walls have to say.” The walls in this anthology have a lot to say. My goal is to share how some of them have spoken to my heart.
If you are a fan of variety, What the House Knows will not disappoint. There are long poems, short poems, poems that rhyme, free verse, classical form poems, prose poems and more. There are great titles too: “The Doghouse,” “Deep in Milkweed,” (What is that all about?), “The Poet Leaves Muzot for Paris and the Housekeeper Remains,” and “The Fire Responds to Questioning.” No poem disappointed me.
Need I explain what “The Doghouse” is about? This delightful take on household unrest, by Eric Nelson, engaged me with a kernel of truth. It sums up, for me, what I felt witnessing my own parents’ consternation with each other. Nelson, the son, imagines life from the perspective of living in the doghouse. His last stanza is precious:
How I learned what it meant to be in the doghouse I don’t know. But whenever I hear the expression I think of my Dad. And Mom. And Ray and the house where I grew up knowing I was loved. And nothing else.
Note: “Ray” is short for “Stray” the dog.
In my youth and even as an adult, I am drawn to the Biblical story of the prophet Jonah in the belly of a Great Fish—he lived there for three days’ time. It is not surprising then that Jennifer Maier’s “The Occupant Imagines the House as a Great Fish” arrested my attention. In this fascinatingly creative gem, Maier finds herself living in a century-old house, “each year a silver iridescent scale.” The poet describes its “creaks and currents of air, its slow, digestive rhythms.” Maier conjures the former occupants, imagines what they were like, asks them questions about the décor, what influenced their decisions. Don’t miss the last stanza on this one—it highlights Maier’s excellent command of her Great Fish metaphor.
Ted Kooser’s “Abandoned Farmhouse” is a masterpiece of interesting details. His listing of clues about the house’s former occupants would impress any detective. Kooser aptly defines the size, shape, demeanor, likes, dislikes, and tendencies of those no longer there. Then Kooser lets everything hang out there wanting answers:
Something went wrong, says the empty house in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste. And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard like branches after a storm—a rubber cow, a rusty tractor with a broken plow a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say. Annette Sisson’s “Deep in Milkweed” describes a dilapidated house, a shack that had none of the basic things, let alone extras. In the country, no running water, barely sound enough to stand on its foundations, the roof was flimsy, no insulation. It did have a wood stove, but the walls were ready to collapse. This bleak portrait of a particular house put me in mind of a family I knew. This family tried everything to sustain their home. The children in the poem reminded me of real people I once knew:
His children, angular and think, Rambled the hill
Deep in milkweed. Sharp pods scraped
their skin as they scanned for monarchs. Tufts of floss
released, ribboned the empty heat, the sky.
During my childhood in rural central Illinois, my family moved six times. At each new place, I found small things, inconsequential things, that wedded me to history and to the people that once dwelt there. Jane Kenyon’s “Finding a Long Gray Hair,” captures the essence:
I scrub the long floorboards in the kitchen, repeating the motions of other women who have lived in this house. And when I find a long gray hair floating in the pail, I feel my life added to theirs.
What the House Knows has returned me to the places and to the people that shaped me into the person I am today. The poems connect with reality (my reality) on so many levels. And yes, it is poetry, which is its own reason for being, that has moved my heart into its depths.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted October 1, 2025
About houses Robert Frost once wrote, “Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second.” This thought occurred to me as I read the wonderful poems in editor Diane Lockward’s superb anthology, What the House Knows. After all, few things matter more, or have exerted greater influence, for good or bad, upon our lives, than those special places we call home. Lockward, in her excellent introduction, concludes “As you move through the poems . . . listen to what the walls have to say.” The walls in this anthology have a lot to say. My goal is to share how some of them have spoken to my heart.
If you are a fan of variety, What the House Knows will not disappoint. There are long poems, short poems, poems that rhyme, free verse, classical form poems, prose poems and more. There are great titles too: “The Doghouse,” “Deep in Milkweed,” (What is that all about?), “The Poet Leaves Muzot for Paris and the Housekeeper Remains,” and “The Fire Responds to Questioning.” No poem disappointed me.
Need I explain what “The Doghouse” is about? This delightful take on household unrest, by Eric Nelson, engaged me with a kernel of truth. It sums up, for me, what I felt witnessing my own parents’ consternation with each other. Nelson, the son, imagines life from the perspective of living in the doghouse. His last stanza is precious:
How I learned what it meant to be in the doghouse I don’t know. But whenever I hear the expression I think of my Dad. And Mom. And Ray and the house where I grew up knowing I was loved. And nothing else.
Note: “Ray” is short for “Stray” the dog.
In my youth and even as an adult, I am drawn to the Biblical story of the prophet Jonah in the belly of a Great Fish—he lived there for three days’ time. It is not surprising then that Jennifer Maier’s “The Occupant Imagines the House as a Great Fish” arrested my attention. In this fascinatingly creative gem, Maier finds herself living in a century-old house, “each year a silver iridescent scale.” The poet describes its “creaks and currents of air, its slow, digestive rhythms.” Maier conjures the former occupants, imagines what they were like, asks them questions about the décor, what influenced their decisions. Don’t miss the last stanza on this one—it highlights Maier’s excellent command of her Great Fish metaphor.
Ted Kooser’s “Abandoned Farmhouse” is a masterpiece of interesting details. His listing of clues about the house’s former occupants would impress any detective. Kooser aptly defines the size, shape, demeanor, likes, dislikes, and tendencies of those no longer there. Then Kooser lets everything hang out there wanting answers:
Something went wrong, says the empty house in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste. And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard like branches after a storm—a rubber cow, a rusty tractor with a broken plow a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say. Annette Sisson’s “Deep in Milkweed” describes a dilapidated house, a shack that had none of the basic things, let alone extras. In the country, no running water, barely sound enough to stand on its foundations, the roof was flimsy, no insulation. It did have a wood stove, but the walls were ready to collapse. This bleak portrait of a particular house put me in mind of a family I knew. This family tried everything to sustain their home. The children in the poem reminded me of real people I once knew:
His children, angular and think, Rambled the hill
Deep in milkweed. Sharp pods scraped
their skin as they scanned for monarchs. Tufts of floss
released, ribboned the empty heat, the sky.
During my childhood in rural central Illinois, my family moved six times. At each new place, I found small things, inconsequential things, that wedded me to history and to the people that once dwelt there. Jane Kenyon’s “Finding a Long Gray Hair,” captures the essence:
I scrub the long floorboards in the kitchen, repeating the motions of other women who have lived in this house. And when I find a long gray hair floating in the pail, I feel my life added to theirs.
What the House Knows has returned me to the places and to the people that shaped me into the person I am today. The poems connect with reality (my reality) on so many levels. And yes, it is poetry, which is its own reason for being, that has moved my heart into its depths.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted October 1, 2025
The Language of Cancer: Poems by Caroline Johnson
Kelsay Books, 2025 136 pages
ISBN: 978-1639807420Review by jacob erin-cilberto
As I opened this book, I was expecting a journey that was just filled with pain and sadness, fear and trepidation, a very scary look at an angry disease eating away at body, mind and heart. Instead, I got a book of poems full of fighting spirit and fortitude that demands admiration.
In “Moon Dance,” she relates that it is:
More than a half a century of looking at moons, my throat aches to spell out the letters on my breath--- c-a-n-c-e-r---to pilot then into a muddy ravine and walk away. But I cannot.
She engages us with clever metaphor, showing her poetic prowess even when dealing with such a severe situation.
Like the moon, my tumor is a foreign country. I study its dead landscape, attempt to move my mind to a safe space, allow it to dance until darkness disappears into the rich night light.
She will not succumb to the disease in a darkened night but rather celebrate in recovery as she dances till the darkness disappears.
We love our pets; they are family. I had a cat that died of cancer about seven years back. I relate to her poem, “The Last Toy.” She speaks about her Persian cat dying of lymphoma.
I wonder if her port will feel like mine My breast cancer, her lymphoma is something we experience together.”
My cat had cancer, I had triple bypass surgery. We reflected each other. She was family, “til it’s time to let her go.” Cancer affects more than the individual: it affects family as well. They all suffer with us, no matter what the catastrophic medical issue. They are with us.In “Bears,” she uses metaphor in likening Bears to fears.
hidden, black appearing when we least expect them--- our dark fears, hungry carnivores that devour reason.
In “Echocardiogram” she writes about the technician and how,
My mother’s heart did not stop on her deathbed
For minutes. (I remembered mine was stopped for 90 minutes during my heart surgery) I don’t tell him that it has taken me all my life to face fear… I lean towards him and try to say the right thing.
So, what is the Right Thing? When we are sicker than ever thought possible, are we still trying to be correct and proper in our exchanges with others? Why? Don’t we have the right to be angry? To slam others against the wall with our “dealing with cancer or heart issues or any debilitating disease” language?
In “Cancer Part II,” she personifies cancer much like William Blake did in his poem “The Sick Rose.” Blake talks of cancer or some deadly disease like it is a cankerworm destroying a rose, he uses the metaphors “the howling storm” and how “does thy life destroy.”Caroline writes:
but he was a charmer, not cruel but he Destroyed half my body while it was Blooming. I winked at the sky, but it was dead.
And finally, in “Sonography of a Survivor” she purports, “that which doesn’t murder you, makes you grow.” You survive the cankerworm; you can still bloom.And later in the poem she writes about her twin scars:
one sits of radiated skin, The other a semi-frown, matches Both laced in stitches. If they could talk They’d form a community of gangsters, barroom bouncers who have fought off infection and disease. I have to do this. I have no choice.
I had to have the triple bypass, no choice.Reading this poetry book gave me a new perspective on what I went through.I saw reflections that made sense. I thank Caroline Johnson for writing it.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: jacob erin-cilberto is author of 25 books of poetry, his most recent being A Journeyman’s Poems. He teaches at John Logan College and conducts workshops at Heartland Writers Guild, Southern Illinois Writers Guild and Union County Writers Guild.
Posted September 1, 2025
As I opened this book, I was expecting a journey that was just filled with pain and sadness, fear and trepidation, a very scary look at an angry disease eating away at body, mind and heart. Instead, I got a book of poems full of fighting spirit and fortitude that demands admiration.
In “Moon Dance,” she relates that it is:
More than a half a century of looking at moons, my throat aches to spell out the letters on my breath--- c-a-n-c-e-r---to pilot then into a muddy ravine and walk away. But I cannot.
She engages us with clever metaphor, showing her poetic prowess even when dealing with such a severe situation.
Like the moon, my tumor is a foreign country. I study its dead landscape, attempt to move my mind to a safe space, allow it to dance until darkness disappears into the rich night light.
She will not succumb to the disease in a darkened night but rather celebrate in recovery as she dances till the darkness disappears.
We love our pets; they are family. I had a cat that died of cancer about seven years back. I relate to her poem, “The Last Toy.” She speaks about her Persian cat dying of lymphoma.
I wonder if her port will feel like mine My breast cancer, her lymphoma is something we experience together.”
My cat had cancer, I had triple bypass surgery. We reflected each other. She was family, “til it’s time to let her go.” Cancer affects more than the individual: it affects family as well. They all suffer with us, no matter what the catastrophic medical issue. They are with us.In “Bears,” she uses metaphor in likening Bears to fears.
hidden, black appearing when we least expect them--- our dark fears, hungry carnivores that devour reason.
In “Echocardiogram” she writes about the technician and how,
My mother’s heart did not stop on her deathbed
For minutes. (I remembered mine was stopped for 90 minutes during my heart surgery) I don’t tell him that it has taken me all my life to face fear… I lean towards him and try to say the right thing.
So, what is the Right Thing? When we are sicker than ever thought possible, are we still trying to be correct and proper in our exchanges with others? Why? Don’t we have the right to be angry? To slam others against the wall with our “dealing with cancer or heart issues or any debilitating disease” language?
In “Cancer Part II,” she personifies cancer much like William Blake did in his poem “The Sick Rose.” Blake talks of cancer or some deadly disease like it is a cankerworm destroying a rose, he uses the metaphors “the howling storm” and how “does thy life destroy.”Caroline writes:
but he was a charmer, not cruel but he Destroyed half my body while it was Blooming. I winked at the sky, but it was dead.
And finally, in “Sonography of a Survivor” she purports, “that which doesn’t murder you, makes you grow.” You survive the cankerworm; you can still bloom.And later in the poem she writes about her twin scars:
one sits of radiated skin, The other a semi-frown, matches Both laced in stitches. If they could talk They’d form a community of gangsters, barroom bouncers who have fought off infection and disease. I have to do this. I have no choice.
I had to have the triple bypass, no choice.Reading this poetry book gave me a new perspective on what I went through.I saw reflections that made sense. I thank Caroline Johnson for writing it.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: jacob erin-cilberto is author of 25 books of poetry, his most recent being A Journeyman’s Poems. He teaches at John Logan College and conducts workshops at Heartland Writers Guild, Southern Illinois Writers Guild and Union County Writers Guild.
Posted September 1, 2025
Simultaneous States by Beatriz Fitzgerald Fernandez
Xpress Chapbooks
Bainbridge Island Press, 2025 34 pages
https://bainbridgeisland.press/products/simultaneous-statesReview by Cynthia T. Hahn
Simultaneous States (XPRESS Chapbooks, Bainbridge Island Press, 2025, 34 pp.), the third chapbook of published poems by Beatriz Fitzgerald Fernandez, locates and navigates from two vantage points in every poem—whether present and past, woman and mother, mother and child, Puerto Rican or Other, terrestrial or of the stars. This writer juxtaposes colonizer and colonized, the animate and the machine ("the factories fed our families", "Uni-Mates", p. 24), tide and stillness, death and survival. These parallel states or alternating poetic perspectives, push the reader to imagine and envision another side of events described. Every page is weighed twice; the invitation here is to inhabit another's realm, to explore its contours, to decipher its significance.
The educational space often cited via college and school references becomes a lens; the student becomes the teacher, the mother loses the school-age son, order is called into question. The one who is supposed to return, disappears. Loss is expressed as a state of waiting for the moment before to return, and is akin to forgetfulness ("her last memory of her last son/slipping like sand through a sieve", "The Wave," p. 4), a scarring underscored by reference to the ocean's movement, an arrival of the wave without full erasure, over the sandy beach of time ("I wore white once and waited for my life to return from the sea—", "The Time Tourist", p. 11).
Likewise, a classroom mockery of "restless natives" turns into an embraced sense of "native" self, free to drum, dance and "declare our unrequited love out loud" ("Native", p. 3). From Ponce de Leon ("another man who never found what he came searching for", p. 6), to Christopher Columbus, the referencing of "natives" brings forth the idea of "native" as a positive connection to place, and also displaces the self within the historical reality of those who came before, and were wiped out by contact with the invading colonizers.
The book's title itself resonates with Puerto Rico's ambiguous dual political status, self-governed but not sovereign. As a U.S. born Puerto Rican/Peruvian bilingual university librarian in Florida, Fernandez takes a perspective that also moves beyond the Puerto Rican island, and passes commentary on colonization more broadly. Woody Guthrie's refrain, "This land was made for you and me" takes a new turn here, as Fernandez recounts history as a kind of lyric, "Before it was your land, it was mine.../Before it was our land, it was theirs.../Before it was their land, it was no one's.../Before, I believed we could own a land.../Before it was my land, now it is yours—I surrender my claim—beyond your borders, all the sun-stars of the universe are mine." ("Your Land, My Land", p. 26). The poet's way out of an irreconcilable history is to look to a greater state of being, to move beyond borders, and thus into a space of hope.
These 16 poems, loosely tethered to the primary placing of one thing upon another over the course of a life, is readily accessible through the idea of historical journey ("Traveller's Bones"), rich with culturally-located and broader meanings. In a poignant plea for peace, General Lee's horse, upon surrender to Grant, survives Lee by a year, while his "stall door remains open for eternity/ to let his spirit roam free—free forever from the cannon fire,/free from the burden of one man's weight—and of all men's wars." (p. 25).
Fernandez, through a series of specific narrative elements, coupled with more universal desires, leaves the reader with the impression of having lived both there and here, both then and now, in a heady interplay of repeatedly widening circles of co-existence. The waves of poetry, exhibit the same kind of familiar structure and distanced elements, including a poem in English, also translated into Spanish ("The Time Tourist"/"El Turista del Tiempo", pp. 10-13), that pave the way for the reader to insert herself, whether of Latino/a extraction or outside that sphere, "...like a time traveler who packs years in her bags/like souvenirs, can arrive, leave and come back, unchained."
The strength of this small chapbook in semi-structured free verse, is its renewed vigor on each page, to connect with the reader and bring them quickly into an intimate and yet not completely knowable space. The teacher who assigns her class to write about "something terrible," aligned with a perspective of knowing trauma, is juxtaposed with the blank face of a child who cannot think of a tragedy to write ("Can anyone's life, however short, be so devoid of pain?", "The Best Teacher, p. 18). In a few words poetically aligned, we are there, and still remain here, and we can appreciate these "simultaneous states" of being that only strong poetry may cultivate. For more on this writer's work, see: www.beasbooks.blogspot.com.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Cynthia T. Hahn has authored two volumes of poetry, Outside-In-Side-Out (Finishing Line Press, 2011), and Coïncidence(s) (alfAbarre Press, Paris, 2014). Cynthia is a Professor of French at Lake Forest College, Illinois, teaching creative writing and translation since 1990. Her personal sanctuary is her Japanese garden.
Posted September 1, 2025
Simultaneous States (XPRESS Chapbooks, Bainbridge Island Press, 2025, 34 pp.), the third chapbook of published poems by Beatriz Fitzgerald Fernandez, locates and navigates from two vantage points in every poem—whether present and past, woman and mother, mother and child, Puerto Rican or Other, terrestrial or of the stars. This writer juxtaposes colonizer and colonized, the animate and the machine ("the factories fed our families", "Uni-Mates", p. 24), tide and stillness, death and survival. These parallel states or alternating poetic perspectives, push the reader to imagine and envision another side of events described. Every page is weighed twice; the invitation here is to inhabit another's realm, to explore its contours, to decipher its significance.
The educational space often cited via college and school references becomes a lens; the student becomes the teacher, the mother loses the school-age son, order is called into question. The one who is supposed to return, disappears. Loss is expressed as a state of waiting for the moment before to return, and is akin to forgetfulness ("her last memory of her last son/slipping like sand through a sieve", "The Wave," p. 4), a scarring underscored by reference to the ocean's movement, an arrival of the wave without full erasure, over the sandy beach of time ("I wore white once and waited for my life to return from the sea—", "The Time Tourist", p. 11).
Likewise, a classroom mockery of "restless natives" turns into an embraced sense of "native" self, free to drum, dance and "declare our unrequited love out loud" ("Native", p. 3). From Ponce de Leon ("another man who never found what he came searching for", p. 6), to Christopher Columbus, the referencing of "natives" brings forth the idea of "native" as a positive connection to place, and also displaces the self within the historical reality of those who came before, and were wiped out by contact with the invading colonizers.
The book's title itself resonates with Puerto Rico's ambiguous dual political status, self-governed but not sovereign. As a U.S. born Puerto Rican/Peruvian bilingual university librarian in Florida, Fernandez takes a perspective that also moves beyond the Puerto Rican island, and passes commentary on colonization more broadly. Woody Guthrie's refrain, "This land was made for you and me" takes a new turn here, as Fernandez recounts history as a kind of lyric, "Before it was your land, it was mine.../Before it was our land, it was theirs.../Before it was their land, it was no one's.../Before, I believed we could own a land.../Before it was my land, now it is yours—I surrender my claim—beyond your borders, all the sun-stars of the universe are mine." ("Your Land, My Land", p. 26). The poet's way out of an irreconcilable history is to look to a greater state of being, to move beyond borders, and thus into a space of hope.
These 16 poems, loosely tethered to the primary placing of one thing upon another over the course of a life, is readily accessible through the idea of historical journey ("Traveller's Bones"), rich with culturally-located and broader meanings. In a poignant plea for peace, General Lee's horse, upon surrender to Grant, survives Lee by a year, while his "stall door remains open for eternity/ to let his spirit roam free—free forever from the cannon fire,/free from the burden of one man's weight—and of all men's wars." (p. 25).
Fernandez, through a series of specific narrative elements, coupled with more universal desires, leaves the reader with the impression of having lived both there and here, both then and now, in a heady interplay of repeatedly widening circles of co-existence. The waves of poetry, exhibit the same kind of familiar structure and distanced elements, including a poem in English, also translated into Spanish ("The Time Tourist"/"El Turista del Tiempo", pp. 10-13), that pave the way for the reader to insert herself, whether of Latino/a extraction or outside that sphere, "...like a time traveler who packs years in her bags/like souvenirs, can arrive, leave and come back, unchained."
The strength of this small chapbook in semi-structured free verse, is its renewed vigor on each page, to connect with the reader and bring them quickly into an intimate and yet not completely knowable space. The teacher who assigns her class to write about "something terrible," aligned with a perspective of knowing trauma, is juxtaposed with the blank face of a child who cannot think of a tragedy to write ("Can anyone's life, however short, be so devoid of pain?", "The Best Teacher, p. 18). In a few words poetically aligned, we are there, and still remain here, and we can appreciate these "simultaneous states" of being that only strong poetry may cultivate. For more on this writer's work, see: www.beasbooks.blogspot.com.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Cynthia T. Hahn has authored two volumes of poetry, Outside-In-Side-Out (Finishing Line Press, 2011), and Coïncidence(s) (alfAbarre Press, Paris, 2014). Cynthia is a Professor of French at Lake Forest College, Illinois, teaching creative writing and translation since 1990. Her personal sanctuary is her Japanese garden.
Posted September 1, 2025
Sadie, Queen of the Swollen Nose Saloon by Martina Reisz Newberry
Alien Buddha Press, 2025 105 pages ISBN: 9788314163315 Review by Ann Malaspina
California poet Martina Reisz Newberry celebrates resilience, empathy and the city of Los Angeles in a dark and dazzling new collection, wonderfully titled Sadie, Queen of the Swollen Nose Saloon. Her lead character is an ageless LA survivor named Sadie, who hates war and owns a red felt hat with jewels and feathers that she hasn’t worn yet. While grappling with loneliness and regret, she still reaches for malt balls and delights in the lights on the Pacific.
Who is Sadie? As Newberry says in a Facebook post introducing her heroine, “Sadie is here! Invite her over. She’s unique, good trouble, a day or night you won’t forget, an Acacia Tree, a used book, an alien, a citizen, a dragon.” One thing’s certain: Sadie can’t be denied. By turns selfish and generous, wise and terrified, she will get under your skin and not let go.
Through Sadie’s forthright lens, Newberry examines a world torn by fires, protests, war, and struggle. She tackles tangled subjects from failed diets and housework to poverty and self-hatred. No matter how terribly Sadie’s thoughts spiral, her heart beats hard. For (almost) every cry of anguish, when indifference could be an easy refuge, Sadie finds a counterweight: a snappy reply, a snatch of music, a blueberry scone.
The poems are often framed as conversations between the poet and Sadie. In “Take Orpheus…,” the two argue over darkness and light. “I told her that clarity was ok with me/ I have no appetite for the dark/ unless there is a bright moon…” the poet says. To which, Sadie replies,
“I’m not talking about light, … I’m talking about the way fear and anger tear the masks off of all things and we see, too clearly— way too clearly— that evil has arrived to unseat the God in us.”
Sadie seems very alone, but she wasn’t always. Past lovers still provoke her. Watching swans on a lake, she recalls one. “We floated, dipped, flew only a little,” she writes in “Sadie Tells the Story of her Lost Love to her Lost Love,” but the lover was already to “exorcise” her. Sadie is quick to put a pin in the poet’s romantic illusions, too. In “Kites,” the poet tells Sadie of a sweet moment: “There was salt on your tongue and in my hair. I thought if immortality was offered to me at that moment, I would take it.”
Sadie quickly responds. “My girl,” she tells the poet, “You were invisible all along and you never knew it.” Instead, the cure is in the moment at hand. Feeling the wind in the palms. Giving an unhoused man some food. “Search for life in those things that have no bones. / Search for color hiding the darkness,” she advices in “Sadie’s Tips On How Not To Be Anxious.” It’s the view outside the window, not in ourselves, that will save us.
It's no surprise Sadie has trouble sleeping. When she does, her dreams bring no relief. In “Time of Lies,” Sadie says that “her 3 a.m demons/ are in-person lies come to haunt her.” After lamenting the nightmares, she “brushes her hair, scowls at the mirror,/ pulls a silly face.” Classic Sadie. Refusing to give in to despair, she isn’t done figuring out herself, or the world.
Sometimes, Sadie’s apartment is empty, and the poet goes looking for her. In “The Wind Followed,” she’s searched for Sadie for months. One day she finds her in an alley. “I’ve been walking these streets/ wondering the wonderful,” Sadie tells her, unconcerned. Sadie muses whether the dandelions growing in the concrete cracks are “god-fierce or so fragile that the/ sidewalk takes pity.” In nature, Sadie finds peace and comfort.
At first, I tried to distinguish between Sadie and the poet but soon gave up. The two switch roles, exchange secrets, and recall each other’s memories. Sometimes, one asks the big questions. Sometimes, the other. The pronouns – I or she – interchange, but the empathy never falters. The world may be cruel and heartless, but in conversation and friendship, captured so well by Newberry, we will find solace. “Sadie is the only one to whom/ I pour out my heart,” the poet writes in “Sadie at the Café,” though, she has “little patience for my sorrows.”
Newberry’s poems have appeared in literary magazines such as Roanoke Review, Braided Way and Mortar Magazine, as well as in anthologies. Her many previous collections include Beyond Temples, Glyphs, and Blues for French Roast with Chicory, from Deerbrook Editions. She has held residencies at Yaddo Colony for the Arts, Djerassi Colony for the Arts, and Anderson Center for Disciplinary Arts.
Sadie’s voice will whisper in your ear long after you close the book. And, if you venture out into a hot Los Angeles night, with the hills burning to the north, you may find Sadie doing the same. In “Fires Burning North,” Sadie is standing, in slippers stained with purple flowers, under an Acacia tree, her hair “tangled in the wind.” “Bits of paper blew around
somewhere a bottle broke and brakes squealed. One of the street lights flickered. It was that kind of night.”
Under siege, but still awe-struck, we are all Sadie.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Ann Malaspina writes children’s books and poems in her 100-year-old house in northern New Jersey. Her YA verse novel “Ghost Runner” (West 44 Books), about a dog named Apollo, a girl who runs cross-country, and her brother’s ghost who won’t let go came out in 2025. Posted September 1, 2025
California poet Martina Reisz Newberry celebrates resilience, empathy and the city of Los Angeles in a dark and dazzling new collection, wonderfully titled Sadie, Queen of the Swollen Nose Saloon. Her lead character is an ageless LA survivor named Sadie, who hates war and owns a red felt hat with jewels and feathers that she hasn’t worn yet. While grappling with loneliness and regret, she still reaches for malt balls and delights in the lights on the Pacific.
Who is Sadie? As Newberry says in a Facebook post introducing her heroine, “Sadie is here! Invite her over. She’s unique, good trouble, a day or night you won’t forget, an Acacia Tree, a used book, an alien, a citizen, a dragon.” One thing’s certain: Sadie can’t be denied. By turns selfish and generous, wise and terrified, she will get under your skin and not let go.
Through Sadie’s forthright lens, Newberry examines a world torn by fires, protests, war, and struggle. She tackles tangled subjects from failed diets and housework to poverty and self-hatred. No matter how terribly Sadie’s thoughts spiral, her heart beats hard. For (almost) every cry of anguish, when indifference could be an easy refuge, Sadie finds a counterweight: a snappy reply, a snatch of music, a blueberry scone.
The poems are often framed as conversations between the poet and Sadie. In “Take Orpheus…,” the two argue over darkness and light. “I told her that clarity was ok with me/ I have no appetite for the dark/ unless there is a bright moon…” the poet says. To which, Sadie replies,
“I’m not talking about light, … I’m talking about the way fear and anger tear the masks off of all things and we see, too clearly— way too clearly— that evil has arrived to unseat the God in us.”
Sadie seems very alone, but she wasn’t always. Past lovers still provoke her. Watching swans on a lake, she recalls one. “We floated, dipped, flew only a little,” she writes in “Sadie Tells the Story of her Lost Love to her Lost Love,” but the lover was already to “exorcise” her. Sadie is quick to put a pin in the poet’s romantic illusions, too. In “Kites,” the poet tells Sadie of a sweet moment: “There was salt on your tongue and in my hair. I thought if immortality was offered to me at that moment, I would take it.”
Sadie quickly responds. “My girl,” she tells the poet, “You were invisible all along and you never knew it.” Instead, the cure is in the moment at hand. Feeling the wind in the palms. Giving an unhoused man some food. “Search for life in those things that have no bones. / Search for color hiding the darkness,” she advices in “Sadie’s Tips On How Not To Be Anxious.” It’s the view outside the window, not in ourselves, that will save us.
It's no surprise Sadie has trouble sleeping. When she does, her dreams bring no relief. In “Time of Lies,” Sadie says that “her 3 a.m demons/ are in-person lies come to haunt her.” After lamenting the nightmares, she “brushes her hair, scowls at the mirror,/ pulls a silly face.” Classic Sadie. Refusing to give in to despair, she isn’t done figuring out herself, or the world.
Sometimes, Sadie’s apartment is empty, and the poet goes looking for her. In “The Wind Followed,” she’s searched for Sadie for months. One day she finds her in an alley. “I’ve been walking these streets/ wondering the wonderful,” Sadie tells her, unconcerned. Sadie muses whether the dandelions growing in the concrete cracks are “god-fierce or so fragile that the/ sidewalk takes pity.” In nature, Sadie finds peace and comfort.
At first, I tried to distinguish between Sadie and the poet but soon gave up. The two switch roles, exchange secrets, and recall each other’s memories. Sometimes, one asks the big questions. Sometimes, the other. The pronouns – I or she – interchange, but the empathy never falters. The world may be cruel and heartless, but in conversation and friendship, captured so well by Newberry, we will find solace. “Sadie is the only one to whom/ I pour out my heart,” the poet writes in “Sadie at the Café,” though, she has “little patience for my sorrows.”
Newberry’s poems have appeared in literary magazines such as Roanoke Review, Braided Way and Mortar Magazine, as well as in anthologies. Her many previous collections include Beyond Temples, Glyphs, and Blues for French Roast with Chicory, from Deerbrook Editions. She has held residencies at Yaddo Colony for the Arts, Djerassi Colony for the Arts, and Anderson Center for Disciplinary Arts.
Sadie’s voice will whisper in your ear long after you close the book. And, if you venture out into a hot Los Angeles night, with the hills burning to the north, you may find Sadie doing the same. In “Fires Burning North,” Sadie is standing, in slippers stained with purple flowers, under an Acacia tree, her hair “tangled in the wind.” “Bits of paper blew around
somewhere a bottle broke and brakes squealed. One of the street lights flickered. It was that kind of night.”
Under siege, but still awe-struck, we are all Sadie.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Ann Malaspina writes children’s books and poems in her 100-year-old house in northern New Jersey. Her YA verse novel “Ghost Runner” (West 44 Books), about a dog named Apollo, a girl who runs cross-country, and her brother’s ghost who won’t let go came out in 2025. Posted September 1, 2025
A Swale A Sort of Swaddle by Abby Walthausen
Spuyten Devil, 2025 51 poems ~ 89 pages ISBN: 978-1-963908-61-9
Spuytenduyvil.net Review by Michael Escoubas
In the early years of our marriage our doctors informed my wife and me that we would never have children by normal means. Accepting their pronouncement, we adopted two wonderful sons. However, after twenty years of marriage and, in our mid-forties . . . guess what . . . a lovely daughter was born. She is now thirty-five with her own burgeoning family. While the above story is by no means unusual, it certainly was a sea-change for us. The surprise of pregnancy was no easy road to travel given the assumptions noted.
I returned to those distant years as I contemplated my review of Abby Walthausen’s intriguing collection, A Swale a Sort of Swaddle. Within these poems I hear notes of ambivalence, along with a touch of darkness as well as uncertainty about the reality of motherhood and her experiences within it. I also sense a singular commitment to family life as well as an ongoing maturation process.
The collection’s cover image is a drawing made by Abby’s son aged three. In Abby’s words, “It depicts a “magical, anthropomorphic car he imagined and named cherry red. The words were an early attempt to write cherry red, the boy’s name for the car.” I had previously inquired about the cover’s design:
The main reason I included the text and image is because the two side-by-side represent to me this leap from pictograph to letter, literal to abstract expression as vehicles for the imagination.
Indeed, movement within the “literal” and the “abstract” is a prominent feature of the whole.
Definitions from the Title
“Swale” is a low-lying or depressed and often wet stretch of land, more commonly known as a bog.
“Swaddle” means to wrap someone, especially a baby, tightly in a blanket or in pieces of cloth. Swaddling gives the child a sense of comfort and security.
Source: Webster’s online Dictionary.
Over the years my wife and I have noticed both the “swale” effect; and the “swaddling” effect. This poet speaks to that which is real in life and does so with her own unique originality.
Organization and Themes
A Swale a Kind of Swaddle is organized in four divisions: 1) Once Around, 14; 2) Vines and Bines, 15; 3) Vessels for Weaning With, 6; 4) Re-Homing, 16.
In her endorsement of Swale, writer Kim Young notes that Walthausen’s interests span “motherhood, religion, domesticity, displacement, and the natural world with dark humor and sonic virtuosity.” Each section opens with the words: In this Reliquary. A reliquary, for Abby, is a manila envelope in which treasured memories are stored. Here is the first one:
Reliquary #1
In this manila pocket I have placed
sand caked together with zinc from your first visit to the beach
clipped nails, a cowlick hardened clipped hair, a crescent limp
and the meteor your navel brought, a little oxblood stone.
Shocking, all this sloughing, so soon — though when we stand still we see these tidbits shed to honor growth.
I am moved by the poet’s studied devotion to life processes such as “growth.” Each item has a reason for being included. From the same section the poem “Flyby” captures Abby’s heart:
Life is long but can be thicker when I try I am happy, but can only live one strand at a time.
Pluto’s huge valentine showed us no life and since still water is still poor viewing, we watched The Wrong Man, Hitchcock’s plainest, hoping to find an unseen eddy there.
Old quips get lost in the dishwater of one long and glowing noir. Westerns too dissolve their crackling filaments and constellations shed their nets and names.
But now night and day are the same frontier, chaperoned by light as dim as dimmest screen, ragbag now presents a roll, a kick, a muscle, a curl.
And someday, maybe a word.
This just new! Life’s labor to sift and save a few.
I looked forward to entering each new section to learn exactly what items made that section’s “Reliquary.” I wasn’t disappointed. Abby Walthausen is a fresh, energetic force in the world of letters. Her approach is borrowed from no one. A Swale a Kind of Swaddle, gets five stars from this reviewer . . . this is a collection that lives up to Kim Young’s observation of sonic virtuosity.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted September 1, 2025
In the early years of our marriage our doctors informed my wife and me that we would never have children by normal means. Accepting their pronouncement, we adopted two wonderful sons. However, after twenty years of marriage and, in our mid-forties . . . guess what . . . a lovely daughter was born. She is now thirty-five with her own burgeoning family. While the above story is by no means unusual, it certainly was a sea-change for us. The surprise of pregnancy was no easy road to travel given the assumptions noted.
I returned to those distant years as I contemplated my review of Abby Walthausen’s intriguing collection, A Swale a Sort of Swaddle. Within these poems I hear notes of ambivalence, along with a touch of darkness as well as uncertainty about the reality of motherhood and her experiences within it. I also sense a singular commitment to family life as well as an ongoing maturation process.
The collection’s cover image is a drawing made by Abby’s son aged three. In Abby’s words, “It depicts a “magical, anthropomorphic car he imagined and named cherry red. The words were an early attempt to write cherry red, the boy’s name for the car.” I had previously inquired about the cover’s design:
The main reason I included the text and image is because the two side-by-side represent to me this leap from pictograph to letter, literal to abstract expression as vehicles for the imagination.
Indeed, movement within the “literal” and the “abstract” is a prominent feature of the whole.
Definitions from the Title
“Swale” is a low-lying or depressed and often wet stretch of land, more commonly known as a bog.
“Swaddle” means to wrap someone, especially a baby, tightly in a blanket or in pieces of cloth. Swaddling gives the child a sense of comfort and security.
Source: Webster’s online Dictionary.
Over the years my wife and I have noticed both the “swale” effect; and the “swaddling” effect. This poet speaks to that which is real in life and does so with her own unique originality.
Organization and Themes
A Swale a Kind of Swaddle is organized in four divisions: 1) Once Around, 14; 2) Vines and Bines, 15; 3) Vessels for Weaning With, 6; 4) Re-Homing, 16.
In her endorsement of Swale, writer Kim Young notes that Walthausen’s interests span “motherhood, religion, domesticity, displacement, and the natural world with dark humor and sonic virtuosity.” Each section opens with the words: In this Reliquary. A reliquary, for Abby, is a manila envelope in which treasured memories are stored. Here is the first one:
Reliquary #1
In this manila pocket I have placed
sand caked together with zinc from your first visit to the beach
clipped nails, a cowlick hardened clipped hair, a crescent limp
and the meteor your navel brought, a little oxblood stone.
Shocking, all this sloughing, so soon — though when we stand still we see these tidbits shed to honor growth.
I am moved by the poet’s studied devotion to life processes such as “growth.” Each item has a reason for being included. From the same section the poem “Flyby” captures Abby’s heart:
Life is long but can be thicker when I try I am happy, but can only live one strand at a time.
Pluto’s huge valentine showed us no life and since still water is still poor viewing, we watched The Wrong Man, Hitchcock’s plainest, hoping to find an unseen eddy there.
Old quips get lost in the dishwater of one long and glowing noir. Westerns too dissolve their crackling filaments and constellations shed their nets and names.
But now night and day are the same frontier, chaperoned by light as dim as dimmest screen, ragbag now presents a roll, a kick, a muscle, a curl.
And someday, maybe a word.
This just new! Life’s labor to sift and save a few.
I looked forward to entering each new section to learn exactly what items made that section’s “Reliquary.” I wasn’t disappointed. Abby Walthausen is a fresh, energetic force in the world of letters. Her approach is borrowed from no one. A Swale a Kind of Swaddle, gets five stars from this reviewer . . . this is a collection that lives up to Kim Young’s observation of sonic virtuosity.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted September 1, 2025
The Beast Inside by Bill Cushing
Paul Gilliland, Editor
Southern Arizona Press, 2025 103 pages ISBN: 978-1-960038-58-6 Review by Diane L. Redleaf
Bill Cushing’s poetry intrigued me from the moment I read his first line. His name was hidden from me, it turned out, because I first encountered a Bill Cushing poem when I served as a Highland Park Poetry contest judge in the “Ode to a Geographic Place” category this year. I chose his poem as the winner in contest’s largest category—the adult non-residents of Highland Park.
When I saw his newest book, The Beast Inside, on the Highland Park Poetry’s list of new collections waiting for a review, I volunteered, excited to read more poems by this intriguing poet. What better reason is there for doing a review?
It turns out my choice of his poem "Adios Puertorriqueňos" as the contest winner was no fluke: Cushing has published widely; the 77-poem new volume includes poems previously published in 37 different journals (several of these journals published multiple Cushing poems). One can only marvel at his extensive writing credits. Cushing is a prolific writer in multiple genres, with four previously published books of poetry, two works of creative non-fiction, and a book of short stories to his credits.
"Adios Puertorriqueňos" remains one of my favorites in the embarrassment of riches in his new collection. In typical (though not exclusive) Cushing style, the poem is short, pithy, and intellectually intriguing. His cheeky, slight or not-to-so slight political skewering and insight uses artful and exact turns of phrase, formal rigor, a touch of rhyme, and it ends with a razor-sharp and simultaneously witty punch in the gut.
This ten-line, two quatrain stanza poem begins, “The enigma of a plebiscite: commonwealth or state.” Anyone with modicum of political savvy or pretense, mixed with a touch of affection for Spanish (and most of us poets fall into this camp, don’t we?) immediately will get curious as to why the “enigma” he posits means “adios.” He condenses the explanation perfectly in what follows, “embracing statehood would ablate” (who wouldn’t admire just a verb choice placed so perfectly in a line) “cultural roots which would take flight.” And to this rich alliteration he adds the rhyming last line in the stanza, “Such a vote would act as last rites.” In Cushing’s hand, powerful politic positions and powerful poetry roll seamlessly into one.
The second stanza shows, rather than tells, what such loss of those roots portends: “The people will lose, inevitably, the indigenous soul of Taino.” When Cushing writes this, I feel the power the word Taino holds, even though that word hadn’t been in my vocabulary before. Great poems often do that for us—they push us into the world to learn about other people, their histories, their cultures, their sustaining identities.
The last three lines build to Cushing’s final punch, exactly the sort of kick in the gut I often aim for in my own poems (but don’t necessarily achieve so well):
and then isla del encanto becomes another Disney. Just ask Hawaii.
The last line rolls the poem into a much bigger critical narrative. The condemnation is sly, and true to Ode form, it addresses the subject geographic place as if it’s a person being brought into the conversation. The message, of course, is that Hawaii knows better now; we would be saying “adios” to Puerto Rico’s cultural heritage in the statehood vote.
I would hope not. I’m still not sure, after learning Cushing’s point of view in the poem, that I agree entirely that Puerto Rican statehood should be rejected. But boy do I need to take the concern seriously, don’t I? In one very short poem, Cushing has upended my slacktivist views on Puerto Rican independence question and reminded me of the suppression of Hawaiian history and culture to boot.
What Cushing has done here in 10 short lines is to open a powerful conversation. And he does that again and again throughout the book.
Perhaps I enjoy Cushing’s poetry on a visceral level because he taps strong emotions in tandem with his use of poetic tools for thoughtful discursive ends. If I didn’t find the questions he is asking interesting in and of themselves, perhaps his poetry would not be quite as thoroughly engaging as it is. But throughout the collection, Cushing raises important personal, philosophical, moral and political questions. He challenges at the same time as he entertains and describes his world and his wide-ranging memories and encounters. He is also adept on quotidian topics, and some of his best poems in the collection are about characters and relationships. He is nothing if not versatile.
The book also shows Cushing is a master of incongruity. The first line of the very first poem, “At Mrs. Gannett’s,” gives of his off-kilter sensibility: “In a tidy house cluttered with kindness,” it continues to recount how Mrs. Gannet “delighted us with stories of her childhood in Omaha,” (Omaha, you say? How delightful one wonders, as you ask yourself if Cushing is teasing you), and then you learn that she “preferred candles, disdained lightbulbs. This made her invulnerable to the ’65 blackout.” Cushing portrays an intriguing individual indeed, in this and in several other poems in the collection.
The Beast Inside shows Cushing’s mastery of poetic forms, too, as divergent as the haiku, haibun cinquain, imayo, senryu, and the sonnet. The book is full of the personal as well as the political. The book moves from the section entitled “Reminiscent Self” (my favorite set because of the rich subjects he dives into); the “Formal Self” where craft and wide formal variation are on florid display, to the “Dream State Self” with dark, nightmarish and ghoulish imaginings that reveal the beast his title promises.
The arc of this ambitious book does not bend toward justice, however, for the book ending in an epic battle of “reason,” which “infuses calm” to “try and restrain the “brute residing in the brain” (which is not where we usually put the Brute’s residence, is it?). Cushing is telling us something about ourselves that we may not want to know.
In Cushing’s conception, the language of poetry itself is a tool in reason’s attempt at virtue, but it doesn’t necessarily win out against the “beast inside.” Nor is it clear that Cushing sides with reason in every battle, but with a passionate form of reason that wants nothing more than to humanize the questions that trouble his active mind.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Diane L. Redleaf is a lawyer, non-profit leader, child and family policy advocate, legal educator, mentor, mediator, wife, mother, and grandmother from Oak Park, Illinois. She is the author of Odes to the States: Poems Inspired by the 50 States and the District of Columbia as well as What Can Be Held Briefly.
Posted August 1, 2025
Bill Cushing’s poetry intrigued me from the moment I read his first line. His name was hidden from me, it turned out, because I first encountered a Bill Cushing poem when I served as a Highland Park Poetry contest judge in the “Ode to a Geographic Place” category this year. I chose his poem as the winner in contest’s largest category—the adult non-residents of Highland Park.
When I saw his newest book, The Beast Inside, on the Highland Park Poetry’s list of new collections waiting for a review, I volunteered, excited to read more poems by this intriguing poet. What better reason is there for doing a review?
It turns out my choice of his poem "Adios Puertorriqueňos" as the contest winner was no fluke: Cushing has published widely; the 77-poem new volume includes poems previously published in 37 different journals (several of these journals published multiple Cushing poems). One can only marvel at his extensive writing credits. Cushing is a prolific writer in multiple genres, with four previously published books of poetry, two works of creative non-fiction, and a book of short stories to his credits.
"Adios Puertorriqueňos" remains one of my favorites in the embarrassment of riches in his new collection. In typical (though not exclusive) Cushing style, the poem is short, pithy, and intellectually intriguing. His cheeky, slight or not-to-so slight political skewering and insight uses artful and exact turns of phrase, formal rigor, a touch of rhyme, and it ends with a razor-sharp and simultaneously witty punch in the gut.
This ten-line, two quatrain stanza poem begins, “The enigma of a plebiscite: commonwealth or state.” Anyone with modicum of political savvy or pretense, mixed with a touch of affection for Spanish (and most of us poets fall into this camp, don’t we?) immediately will get curious as to why the “enigma” he posits means “adios.” He condenses the explanation perfectly in what follows, “embracing statehood would ablate” (who wouldn’t admire just a verb choice placed so perfectly in a line) “cultural roots which would take flight.” And to this rich alliteration he adds the rhyming last line in the stanza, “Such a vote would act as last rites.” In Cushing’s hand, powerful politic positions and powerful poetry roll seamlessly into one.
The second stanza shows, rather than tells, what such loss of those roots portends: “The people will lose, inevitably, the indigenous soul of Taino.” When Cushing writes this, I feel the power the word Taino holds, even though that word hadn’t been in my vocabulary before. Great poems often do that for us—they push us into the world to learn about other people, their histories, their cultures, their sustaining identities.
The last three lines build to Cushing’s final punch, exactly the sort of kick in the gut I often aim for in my own poems (but don’t necessarily achieve so well):
and then isla del encanto becomes another Disney. Just ask Hawaii.
The last line rolls the poem into a much bigger critical narrative. The condemnation is sly, and true to Ode form, it addresses the subject geographic place as if it’s a person being brought into the conversation. The message, of course, is that Hawaii knows better now; we would be saying “adios” to Puerto Rico’s cultural heritage in the statehood vote.
I would hope not. I’m still not sure, after learning Cushing’s point of view in the poem, that I agree entirely that Puerto Rican statehood should be rejected. But boy do I need to take the concern seriously, don’t I? In one very short poem, Cushing has upended my slacktivist views on Puerto Rican independence question and reminded me of the suppression of Hawaiian history and culture to boot.
What Cushing has done here in 10 short lines is to open a powerful conversation. And he does that again and again throughout the book.
Perhaps I enjoy Cushing’s poetry on a visceral level because he taps strong emotions in tandem with his use of poetic tools for thoughtful discursive ends. If I didn’t find the questions he is asking interesting in and of themselves, perhaps his poetry would not be quite as thoroughly engaging as it is. But throughout the collection, Cushing raises important personal, philosophical, moral and political questions. He challenges at the same time as he entertains and describes his world and his wide-ranging memories and encounters. He is also adept on quotidian topics, and some of his best poems in the collection are about characters and relationships. He is nothing if not versatile.
The book also shows Cushing is a master of incongruity. The first line of the very first poem, “At Mrs. Gannett’s,” gives of his off-kilter sensibility: “In a tidy house cluttered with kindness,” it continues to recount how Mrs. Gannet “delighted us with stories of her childhood in Omaha,” (Omaha, you say? How delightful one wonders, as you ask yourself if Cushing is teasing you), and then you learn that she “preferred candles, disdained lightbulbs. This made her invulnerable to the ’65 blackout.” Cushing portrays an intriguing individual indeed, in this and in several other poems in the collection.
The Beast Inside shows Cushing’s mastery of poetic forms, too, as divergent as the haiku, haibun cinquain, imayo, senryu, and the sonnet. The book is full of the personal as well as the political. The book moves from the section entitled “Reminiscent Self” (my favorite set because of the rich subjects he dives into); the “Formal Self” where craft and wide formal variation are on florid display, to the “Dream State Self” with dark, nightmarish and ghoulish imaginings that reveal the beast his title promises.
The arc of this ambitious book does not bend toward justice, however, for the book ending in an epic battle of “reason,” which “infuses calm” to “try and restrain the “brute residing in the brain” (which is not where we usually put the Brute’s residence, is it?). Cushing is telling us something about ourselves that we may not want to know.
In Cushing’s conception, the language of poetry itself is a tool in reason’s attempt at virtue, but it doesn’t necessarily win out against the “beast inside.” Nor is it clear that Cushing sides with reason in every battle, but with a passionate form of reason that wants nothing more than to humanize the questions that trouble his active mind.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Diane L. Redleaf is a lawyer, non-profit leader, child and family policy advocate, legal educator, mentor, mediator, wife, mother, and grandmother from Oak Park, Illinois. She is the author of Odes to the States: Poems Inspired by the 50 States and the District of Columbia as well as What Can Be Held Briefly.
Posted August 1, 2025
Words for My Mother by Monica K. Allen
Independently published, 2025 39 pages ISBN: 979-8-9921627-0-7 Review by Michael Escoubas
Monica Allen dedicates her debut poetry collection to her late mother Kathleen Lou Sloan. Allen says, she “taught me so much, but not everything.” This amazingly candid description displays an important trait for poets: The ability to step back from her subject and be real about its truth.
Of the more than two hundred poetry books I have read and reviewed, this chapbook stands out to me for its vivid portrayal of love through suffering. Allen writes without pretense, no big show-off words that few can understand. Words for My Mother depicts “love-in-action.”
Background
This collection grows out of Kathleen’s diagnosis of Dermatillomania, a mental health condition where the patient compulsively picks at her skin. Complicating this was the Covid-19 Pandemic with its plethora of dark days, death, and unparalleled disruptions of life. Allen’s poems chronicle their mutual love beginning with Kathleen’s illness and moving through health-stages to the end.
Love that Knows No Barriers
Allen leads with a word of thanks to caregivers: “Haiku for My Disabled Mother”:
The highest of highs Bipolar one disorder The lowest of lows
Unsaid feelings, masked, until the illness took hold of body and mind
Too many years passed before the diagnosis was properly made
Mom’s care: medicines, hospital stays, ETC, therapy hours
“Thanks!” to caregivers, family, and friends, who helped- you kept her alive
Two features stand out to me: One: “Unsaid feelings masked,” and two: “Until the illness took hold of body and mind.” I sense, reading between the lines, a realization, long delayed, that it is now time to be “real” and come to grips with truth and love. The stage is now set; everything is in place for a daughter’s words for her mother.
There is a slow but steady progression in the poems that follow. “Untitled 1999,” uses flowers metaphorically to describe Kathleen’s emergence from “Sheltered, rare, and undiscovered / Nasty weeds covered her for years / she nearly withered away . . . Roots expand in the new garden / Soon she will be a most beautiful flower.” Another poem, “My mom, the treasurer keeper,” portrays a mother who, despite her personal suffering, had time to create fun experiences for her daughter. A pocket in her mother’s bathrobe often became the focus of celebration, in little-girl treasures such as paper clips found, or candy or small toys.
I offer “Ode to My Mother’s Dermatillomania” as a kind of summary of care Kathleen’s condition demanded and Monica’s sensitive love:
The daughter The trusted one
This role Never sought
Her, always honest Showing holes
Me, researching reasons Providing wound care
More time together Visiting doctors
Unconscious craters Brought us closer
Cellulitis cases Multiple medicines
MRSA cells Powered guest room
Other difficulties accumulated Support required
Difficult move Mutually planned
Assisted living apartment Daily skin checks
DuoDERM patches Provided protection
Loving each other 12 miles apart
As Kathleen’s symptoms worsen, Monica’s love and attention increases. Covid-19 is a third major player in this poignant human drama. I admit to tears as Monica’s poems detail those little things that occupy her presence as her mother’s decline defines itself. “The Last Tissue,” says a lot, “Tonight, there is one, one last tissue. I don’t want / to use it. For how long can I let the box / collect dust on the bookshelf?”
For all of us who have grieved with a loved one during their “long goodbye,” Words for My Mother, by Monica Allen is a must read. Whatever had gone before matters little as the end draws near. Please reflect on, “Always Connected”:
Our time here overlapped for 41 years
Together
We loved taught helped listened to each other
Like no one else could
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted August 1, 2025
Monica Allen dedicates her debut poetry collection to her late mother Kathleen Lou Sloan. Allen says, she “taught me so much, but not everything.” This amazingly candid description displays an important trait for poets: The ability to step back from her subject and be real about its truth.
Of the more than two hundred poetry books I have read and reviewed, this chapbook stands out to me for its vivid portrayal of love through suffering. Allen writes without pretense, no big show-off words that few can understand. Words for My Mother depicts “love-in-action.”
Background
This collection grows out of Kathleen’s diagnosis of Dermatillomania, a mental health condition where the patient compulsively picks at her skin. Complicating this was the Covid-19 Pandemic with its plethora of dark days, death, and unparalleled disruptions of life. Allen’s poems chronicle their mutual love beginning with Kathleen’s illness and moving through health-stages to the end.
Love that Knows No Barriers
Allen leads with a word of thanks to caregivers: “Haiku for My Disabled Mother”:
The highest of highs Bipolar one disorder The lowest of lows
Unsaid feelings, masked, until the illness took hold of body and mind
Too many years passed before the diagnosis was properly made
Mom’s care: medicines, hospital stays, ETC, therapy hours
“Thanks!” to caregivers, family, and friends, who helped- you kept her alive
Two features stand out to me: One: “Unsaid feelings masked,” and two: “Until the illness took hold of body and mind.” I sense, reading between the lines, a realization, long delayed, that it is now time to be “real” and come to grips with truth and love. The stage is now set; everything is in place for a daughter’s words for her mother.
There is a slow but steady progression in the poems that follow. “Untitled 1999,” uses flowers metaphorically to describe Kathleen’s emergence from “Sheltered, rare, and undiscovered / Nasty weeds covered her for years / she nearly withered away . . . Roots expand in the new garden / Soon she will be a most beautiful flower.” Another poem, “My mom, the treasurer keeper,” portrays a mother who, despite her personal suffering, had time to create fun experiences for her daughter. A pocket in her mother’s bathrobe often became the focus of celebration, in little-girl treasures such as paper clips found, or candy or small toys.
I offer “Ode to My Mother’s Dermatillomania” as a kind of summary of care Kathleen’s condition demanded and Monica’s sensitive love:
The daughter The trusted one
This role Never sought
Her, always honest Showing holes
Me, researching reasons Providing wound care
More time together Visiting doctors
Unconscious craters Brought us closer
Cellulitis cases Multiple medicines
MRSA cells Powered guest room
Other difficulties accumulated Support required
Difficult move Mutually planned
Assisted living apartment Daily skin checks
DuoDERM patches Provided protection
Loving each other 12 miles apart
As Kathleen’s symptoms worsen, Monica’s love and attention increases. Covid-19 is a third major player in this poignant human drama. I admit to tears as Monica’s poems detail those little things that occupy her presence as her mother’s decline defines itself. “The Last Tissue,” says a lot, “Tonight, there is one, one last tissue. I don’t want / to use it. For how long can I let the box / collect dust on the bookshelf?”
For all of us who have grieved with a loved one during their “long goodbye,” Words for My Mother, by Monica Allen is a must read. Whatever had gone before matters little as the end draws near. Please reflect on, “Always Connected”:
Our time here overlapped for 41 years
Together
We loved taught helped listened to each other
Like no one else could
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted August 1, 2025
Dining on Salt: Four Seasons of Septets by Wayne Lee
Cornerstone Press, 2025 80 poems / 138 pages ISBN: 978-1-960329-85-1 Review by Michael Escoubas
When I review poetry books I tend to court a touch of “friendly skepticism.” I hold off “signing on” with the book. However, Wayne Lee’s Dining on Salt: Four Seasons of Septets, “had me from hello,” to borrow a line from the movie, Jerry Maguire. Two reasons merged for me: First, Lee demonstrates how instrumental poetry was, and continues to be, in coping with the loss of his dear wife Alice. Second, I received an education about the poetry form “septet.”
I was transfixed reading Lee’s “Preface: Four Seasons of Septets.” This important background summary traces the author’s discovery of the septet form as well as the rigorous self-imposed discipline Lee put himself through to become proficient in it. (I dare say that the poet himself would deny my assertion of proficiency.) The Preface also provides important context about “why” a collection consisting entirely of poems no longer than seven lines. Exhausted after twenty years of serving as caregiver for his disabled wife, her death by suicide was a further emotional/psychological blow waiting backstage to further test his mettle. To quote the poet himself:
. . . my writing practice has always been a way for me to process life experiences, so in the end I was grateful for my self-imposed discipline. The limitations of the seven-line forms forced me to crystallize my thoughts and feelings and helped me digest them in bite-sized bits, rather than choking on the enormity of it all.
I have noticed this before: it is as if poetry becomes a spiritual dimension of the grieving person’s life. Poetry takes over as a life-giving, life-saving force. Without poetry the grieving person himself might perish.
Dining on Salt is organized under four headings: I. That Sounding Sense, II. This One Sock, III. White than the Palest Skin, and IV. Gestures of Preservations. One may regard these divisions in more than one way as to “seasons.” The natural transformations of planet earth, and/or the seasons of Wayne Lee’s experiences as Alice’s caregiver. The enigmatic title selections suggest the latter rather than the former.
From Sounding Sense, I think two poems set the stage for the sections that follow:
What a Wonderful World
I hold your waist as you transfer from wheelchair to toilet seat, pull down your wet pullup and pajama bottom, replace them with a dry diaper and clean cotton pants.
We stand like that for one sweet moment, your forehead pressed against my chest, swaying to that first slow dance in the park.
This poem and the next begin a progression of seasons in their poignant love expressions. I visualize the emotions, the play of memory flowing through the poet. This is intimacy; this is commitment; this is love.
Reading to My Wife
Will you read to me? she asks when she can’t sleep. Will you read from Peter Rabbit or Winnie the Pooh?
So I sit by her bed rail and narrate again the tales she knows so well, until the meds kick in, until she closes her eyes, clutching her favorite bear.
In this poem, Alice can still communicate. She asks for things Wayne can still deliver. And deliver he does aptly show the grace of long-suffering.
Alice succumbs in the next section: This One Sock.
Sunlight: A Shanzi
—for Alice Rose Lee (1952-2018)
My wife takes her life and an angel suddenly appears. I kiss her, then she too flies off. Blinding sunlight, then the darkest night.
The grace of long-suffering finds its end, but the end is only the beginning. Even though Wayne has suffered he defers to his wife as the true sufferer. At this point, the title poem comes into play:
Dining on Salt: A Whitney
No dinner, again. Empty heart, empty belly. Dining on salt, on all that is left after the sea has dried up.
The “Whitney” is one among dozens of septet variations employed by Lee. His own dark night commences—Wayne “needs” poetry, now as never before to get him through. This poem holds nothing back, yet the poet is under control with how he expresses his grief. Could there be a more effective image than . . .
“after the sea has dried up.”
After his salt diet, Wayne visualizes a whole range of delectable things:
Root Soup
I have this hunger for rootstocks, for rutabagas and Yukon Gold potatoes, for unpeeled carrots, turnips, parsnips, for the fruits of the earth that ripen slowly in the autumn sun, for sweet onion, plump garlic, skin-on delicata squash. And for the kiss of seasoning, for sea salt, rosemary, peppercorns, lemon thyme. I have this need for what lies beneath.
Thus, the third season “Whiter than the Palest Skin” begins with things “beneath” the ground. There is savory richness, robust coloration and sweet aromas. I sense the power of poetry coming powerfully into play, but in a new way. “Windowpane” is an example of this “new” way:
Ice on the pond thin as a windowpane.
Some grief must be drowned in small words and soft sounds.
Koi slow themselves down in winter, grow so cold they eat no food at all.
Clouds float below my feet.
Note the simple, relaxed ambience. Grief is not managing the poet. The poet is subsumed in the near limitless power of words to slowly transform his life.
This book has had a transforming effect on my life. I too have witnessed seasons of grief. What Wayne Lee has achieved will stand the test of time and will be living light to many who grieve.
In addition, Lee offers additional information about the septet form:
Appendix A: A Brief History of the Septet Appendix B: A Compendium of Seven-Line Forms ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment. Posted August 1, 2025
When I review poetry books I tend to court a touch of “friendly skepticism.” I hold off “signing on” with the book. However, Wayne Lee’s Dining on Salt: Four Seasons of Septets, “had me from hello,” to borrow a line from the movie, Jerry Maguire. Two reasons merged for me: First, Lee demonstrates how instrumental poetry was, and continues to be, in coping with the loss of his dear wife Alice. Second, I received an education about the poetry form “septet.”
I was transfixed reading Lee’s “Preface: Four Seasons of Septets.” This important background summary traces the author’s discovery of the septet form as well as the rigorous self-imposed discipline Lee put himself through to become proficient in it. (I dare say that the poet himself would deny my assertion of proficiency.) The Preface also provides important context about “why” a collection consisting entirely of poems no longer than seven lines. Exhausted after twenty years of serving as caregiver for his disabled wife, her death by suicide was a further emotional/psychological blow waiting backstage to further test his mettle. To quote the poet himself:
. . . my writing practice has always been a way for me to process life experiences, so in the end I was grateful for my self-imposed discipline. The limitations of the seven-line forms forced me to crystallize my thoughts and feelings and helped me digest them in bite-sized bits, rather than choking on the enormity of it all.
I have noticed this before: it is as if poetry becomes a spiritual dimension of the grieving person’s life. Poetry takes over as a life-giving, life-saving force. Without poetry the grieving person himself might perish.
Dining on Salt is organized under four headings: I. That Sounding Sense, II. This One Sock, III. White than the Palest Skin, and IV. Gestures of Preservations. One may regard these divisions in more than one way as to “seasons.” The natural transformations of planet earth, and/or the seasons of Wayne Lee’s experiences as Alice’s caregiver. The enigmatic title selections suggest the latter rather than the former.
From Sounding Sense, I think two poems set the stage for the sections that follow:
What a Wonderful World
I hold your waist as you transfer from wheelchair to toilet seat, pull down your wet pullup and pajama bottom, replace them with a dry diaper and clean cotton pants.
We stand like that for one sweet moment, your forehead pressed against my chest, swaying to that first slow dance in the park.
This poem and the next begin a progression of seasons in their poignant love expressions. I visualize the emotions, the play of memory flowing through the poet. This is intimacy; this is commitment; this is love.
Reading to My Wife
Will you read to me? she asks when she can’t sleep. Will you read from Peter Rabbit or Winnie the Pooh?
So I sit by her bed rail and narrate again the tales she knows so well, until the meds kick in, until she closes her eyes, clutching her favorite bear.
In this poem, Alice can still communicate. She asks for things Wayne can still deliver. And deliver he does aptly show the grace of long-suffering.
Alice succumbs in the next section: This One Sock.
Sunlight: A Shanzi
—for Alice Rose Lee (1952-2018)
My wife takes her life and an angel suddenly appears. I kiss her, then she too flies off. Blinding sunlight, then the darkest night.
The grace of long-suffering finds its end, but the end is only the beginning. Even though Wayne has suffered he defers to his wife as the true sufferer. At this point, the title poem comes into play:
Dining on Salt: A Whitney
No dinner, again. Empty heart, empty belly. Dining on salt, on all that is left after the sea has dried up.
The “Whitney” is one among dozens of septet variations employed by Lee. His own dark night commences—Wayne “needs” poetry, now as never before to get him through. This poem holds nothing back, yet the poet is under control with how he expresses his grief. Could there be a more effective image than . . .
“after the sea has dried up.”
After his salt diet, Wayne visualizes a whole range of delectable things:
Root Soup
I have this hunger for rootstocks, for rutabagas and Yukon Gold potatoes, for unpeeled carrots, turnips, parsnips, for the fruits of the earth that ripen slowly in the autumn sun, for sweet onion, plump garlic, skin-on delicata squash. And for the kiss of seasoning, for sea salt, rosemary, peppercorns, lemon thyme. I have this need for what lies beneath.
Thus, the third season “Whiter than the Palest Skin” begins with things “beneath” the ground. There is savory richness, robust coloration and sweet aromas. I sense the power of poetry coming powerfully into play, but in a new way. “Windowpane” is an example of this “new” way:
Ice on the pond thin as a windowpane.
Some grief must be drowned in small words and soft sounds.
Koi slow themselves down in winter, grow so cold they eat no food at all.
Clouds float below my feet.
Note the simple, relaxed ambience. Grief is not managing the poet. The poet is subsumed in the near limitless power of words to slowly transform his life.
This book has had a transforming effect on my life. I too have witnessed seasons of grief. What Wayne Lee has achieved will stand the test of time and will be living light to many who grieve.
In addition, Lee offers additional information about the septet form:
Appendix A: A Brief History of the Septet Appendix B: A Compendium of Seven-Line Forms ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment. Posted August 1, 2025
On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing by Jeannie E. Roberts
Kelsay Books, 2025 43 poems / 86 pages ISBN: 978-1-63980-686-7 Review by Michael Escoubas
On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing, Jeannie Roberts’ bold new collection, recalls two titles by two famous poets: Wallace Stevens’ “A Clear Day and No Memories,” and Walt Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric.” Although Robert’s collection is titled On a Clear Night, both Stevens and Roberts seek clarity and insight into the meaning of life. Admittedly, they set about doing this in diverse ways. The similarity between Whitman and Roberts lies in their explorations of the human body both in its parts and in the whole.
Roberts’ epigram prepares her audience:
I think about my bodyand how on a clear night, I can hear her voiceas I rejoice in another hour, another dayanother remembrance to behold
Her well-chosen saying coordinates nicely with the collection’s layout and design: I. The Animal Body (16), The Familial Body (15), and The Human Body (12). Each division contributes to the whole in its own way.
Roberts’ lead poem “Seeing Life for What It Is,” inspired me toward first steps on a meaningful journey. Her eye for elevating the ordinary is a trait I have noticed in her other works. In the instant poem, the setting is winter. A gander leads his mate between icy shapes near the shore. For most eyes, this scene is merely mundane, happening all the time, right? Not for Roberts—this pair of geese is a study in “luminosity”—this is music, this is a world of crystal and sun—a fluid essence that visualizes life itself. She is asking, “Where are we in life if we fail to sense life happening in the ordinary?
Her titles intrigue me, haunt me, compel me to read on. Roberts is a “discovery” poet. “How Can We Know a Life Unless We’ve Lived It,” personifies a lake as life-source. The lake water quivers, trembles, and flutters. Here poems are active; letters and lines launch, dance, and ripple, on and off the page. The lake’s life becomes synonymous with Roberts’ creative life.
Another absorbing title, “Inheritance and the Practice of Catch and Release,” opens Section II, The Familial Body. Joy of life is discovered when she compares our life experiences to something easily observed in nature: What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly. I appreciated the dark humor in this poem, an apt illustration of the imagination’s range.
Various poems highlight the poet’s debt to her Swedish immigrant grandparents as well as to her parents. Poems such as “Potatoes, Prayers, and Sunfish at Dusk,” “The Distaff, the Spindle, and a Cradle Full of Purkinje Fibers,” among others, describe her debt to her ancestors. She describes their craft skills, their common sense, their love for the land and the environment. These poems took my heart hostage with their homespun humanity. Robert’s poetic range is further illustrated through traditional forms such as the Villanelle, and the Sestina. Several examples of each are sprinkled throughout the work. “When the Forced Adoption Goes Array or Does It? is a villanelle about an unsavory character who earns the telling line, Parasites flourish like wood ticks seize skin. Don’t miss this one.
“Holding Space with Bookmarks,” is a work of the heart that honors her Dad’s love of John Keats:
As my hand touched the page, I focused on the lines. In a poetic instant there we were, Dad and I—
Where falling stars dart their artillery forth, And eagles struggle with the buffeting north My heart of heavy meteor-stone knew, Felt too, I was not fearful, nor alone
The Human Body, Section III, opens with a goodbye wave to winter: “You Know What to Do,” generates unfettered joy. Roberts’ poetry is instinctive about how people feel. She captures things felt, articulating what we all feel but fail to notice, much less put into words.
“Take a Seat,” offers a life-perspective introduced by a quintet from Rumi:
This being human is a guest house.Every morning a new arrival.A joy, a depression, a meanness,some momentary awareness comesAs an unexpected visitor. —The Guest House, Rumi
Roberts’ development of Rumi’s lines is well worth the effort . . . this one’s a gem.
The spare poem “Human” for me is like a capsheaf atop a shock of wheat:
See that blade of grass as it glows in the early light its green tip barely visible
Do you see it?
After the glacial months it pushes through the darkness surrenders to emergence
and
so
can
you
I sensed layers of meaning in this poem and in poems throughout the collection. Roberts’ poetry truly sings a melody in concert with her epigram:
I think about my body and how on a clear night, I can hear her voice as I rejoice in another hour, another day another remembrance to behold
On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing, is a fountain of memories full and overflowing.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted August 1, 2025
On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing, Jeannie Roberts’ bold new collection, recalls two titles by two famous poets: Wallace Stevens’ “A Clear Day and No Memories,” and Walt Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric.” Although Robert’s collection is titled On a Clear Night, both Stevens and Roberts seek clarity and insight into the meaning of life. Admittedly, they set about doing this in diverse ways. The similarity between Whitman and Roberts lies in their explorations of the human body both in its parts and in the whole.
Roberts’ epigram prepares her audience:
I think about my bodyand how on a clear night, I can hear her voiceas I rejoice in another hour, another dayanother remembrance to behold
Her well-chosen saying coordinates nicely with the collection’s layout and design: I. The Animal Body (16), The Familial Body (15), and The Human Body (12). Each division contributes to the whole in its own way.
Roberts’ lead poem “Seeing Life for What It Is,” inspired me toward first steps on a meaningful journey. Her eye for elevating the ordinary is a trait I have noticed in her other works. In the instant poem, the setting is winter. A gander leads his mate between icy shapes near the shore. For most eyes, this scene is merely mundane, happening all the time, right? Not for Roberts—this pair of geese is a study in “luminosity”—this is music, this is a world of crystal and sun—a fluid essence that visualizes life itself. She is asking, “Where are we in life if we fail to sense life happening in the ordinary?
Her titles intrigue me, haunt me, compel me to read on. Roberts is a “discovery” poet. “How Can We Know a Life Unless We’ve Lived It,” personifies a lake as life-source. The lake water quivers, trembles, and flutters. Here poems are active; letters and lines launch, dance, and ripple, on and off the page. The lake’s life becomes synonymous with Roberts’ creative life.
Another absorbing title, “Inheritance and the Practice of Catch and Release,” opens Section II, The Familial Body. Joy of life is discovered when she compares our life experiences to something easily observed in nature: What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly. I appreciated the dark humor in this poem, an apt illustration of the imagination’s range.
Various poems highlight the poet’s debt to her Swedish immigrant grandparents as well as to her parents. Poems such as “Potatoes, Prayers, and Sunfish at Dusk,” “The Distaff, the Spindle, and a Cradle Full of Purkinje Fibers,” among others, describe her debt to her ancestors. She describes their craft skills, their common sense, their love for the land and the environment. These poems took my heart hostage with their homespun humanity. Robert’s poetic range is further illustrated through traditional forms such as the Villanelle, and the Sestina. Several examples of each are sprinkled throughout the work. “When the Forced Adoption Goes Array or Does It? is a villanelle about an unsavory character who earns the telling line, Parasites flourish like wood ticks seize skin. Don’t miss this one.
“Holding Space with Bookmarks,” is a work of the heart that honors her Dad’s love of John Keats:
As my hand touched the page, I focused on the lines. In a poetic instant there we were, Dad and I—
Where falling stars dart their artillery forth, And eagles struggle with the buffeting north My heart of heavy meteor-stone knew, Felt too, I was not fearful, nor alone
The Human Body, Section III, opens with a goodbye wave to winter: “You Know What to Do,” generates unfettered joy. Roberts’ poetry is instinctive about how people feel. She captures things felt, articulating what we all feel but fail to notice, much less put into words.
“Take a Seat,” offers a life-perspective introduced by a quintet from Rumi:
This being human is a guest house.Every morning a new arrival.A joy, a depression, a meanness,some momentary awareness comesAs an unexpected visitor. —The Guest House, Rumi
Roberts’ development of Rumi’s lines is well worth the effort . . . this one’s a gem.
The spare poem “Human” for me is like a capsheaf atop a shock of wheat:
See that blade of grass as it glows in the early light its green tip barely visible
Do you see it?
After the glacial months it pushes through the darkness surrenders to emergence
and
so
can
you
I sensed layers of meaning in this poem and in poems throughout the collection. Roberts’ poetry truly sings a melody in concert with her epigram:
I think about my body and how on a clear night, I can hear her voice as I rejoice in another hour, another day another remembrance to behold
On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing, is a fountain of memories full and overflowing.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted August 1, 2025
Diorama by Sandra Marchetti
Steven F. Austin University Press, 2025 80 pages ISBN: 978-1622882830 Review by Marie Asner
Sandra Marchetti is a prolific writer. In her previous poetry collection, Aisle 228, she takes the word “baseball” and gives all connected with the sport, new meaning. For this, she won The Twin Bill Book Award Prize for Best Baseball Poetry Book of the Year. Previous poetry publications by Marchetti have been Confluence from Sundress Publications and Sight Lines from Speaking of Marvels Press. Sandra Marchetti has an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. She is now the Assistant Director of Academic Support at Harper College. Just what is a definition of the word “diorama?” Usually, it is a model of something, such as a room, and, also, can be a replica of something else. Closer words of definition can be icon or picture. In Sandra Marchetti’s short poems, the words are just enough to form a concept. The book is divided into three sections, and in Section One, “Semblance” begins using the word “diorama”, “…a couple playing catch slides from view, still the diorama assembles…” In “Married Pairs, a short poem, the author tells of being under the El with snow, “…when the flakes came, I knew I could do nothing to hold you.” In Section Two, we have mountains and “Seven Sisters” and “…a stand of pines divined on their side.” In “Imagination,” the writer describes fishing with someone, “I listen to your fishing story and wonder, does anyone cook the catch anymore?” The teachings of a mother shine in “Mother,” and “I carry your nerves….as sparks in my pocket.” In Section Three, “Heirloom” places the reader in a garden, with mature plants and hands in the soil, “…morning gold leaves now skirt the balcony…” One of my favorites is “Breath” and describing being alone in a library listening to air in the vents and the quietness of it all. If you are adapt with a kitchen knife, “Mise en Place” details the cutting of a fruit into small sections. “Birthday” is a pleasant time, not going to the Blue Grotto, but relaxing at a beach and “the boatman was a bus driver.” To whet the reader’s appetite, is “County Donuts” and “Sugar caked on my lips slips through the air like crystal ice…” For a loved one, there is “Of Late”, describing an aging husband “his lashes flick as I preen the gray at his temples.” Each poem in Sandra Marchetti’s collection gives the reader just enough words to form an idea in the mind, such as … "morning gold leaves now skirt the balcony…” and the reader begins to think of the times they have seen this on their balcony and not noticed the beauty in color. The ideas flow down the page and the relaxing reader thinks of times in their lives, something was similar to this, whether it be traveling or food preparation or seasons of sea and sand or snow and the big city. You want to finish the poem with, “I remember when…” The descriptive words come suddenly, such as “I fixed my goggles to see yellow angels escape me…” Each page in “Diorama” is a pocket of memory in the poetry of Sandra Marchetti.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Marie Asner balances a life of being a poet, freelance writer, book reviewer and entertainment reviewer. The Kansas Arts Commission selected her for a grant on poems of Amelia Earhart and to be part of Kansas Arts on Tour. Marie is a member of the Missouri and Illinois State Poetry Societies. The Rockford Writers Guild and The Kansas Authors Club.
Posted July 1, 2025
Sandra Marchetti is a prolific writer. In her previous poetry collection, Aisle 228, she takes the word “baseball” and gives all connected with the sport, new meaning. For this, she won The Twin Bill Book Award Prize for Best Baseball Poetry Book of the Year. Previous poetry publications by Marchetti have been Confluence from Sundress Publications and Sight Lines from Speaking of Marvels Press. Sandra Marchetti has an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. She is now the Assistant Director of Academic Support at Harper College. Just what is a definition of the word “diorama?” Usually, it is a model of something, such as a room, and, also, can be a replica of something else. Closer words of definition can be icon or picture. In Sandra Marchetti’s short poems, the words are just enough to form a concept. The book is divided into three sections, and in Section One, “Semblance” begins using the word “diorama”, “…a couple playing catch slides from view, still the diorama assembles…” In “Married Pairs, a short poem, the author tells of being under the El with snow, “…when the flakes came, I knew I could do nothing to hold you.” In Section Two, we have mountains and “Seven Sisters” and “…a stand of pines divined on their side.” In “Imagination,” the writer describes fishing with someone, “I listen to your fishing story and wonder, does anyone cook the catch anymore?” The teachings of a mother shine in “Mother,” and “I carry your nerves….as sparks in my pocket.” In Section Three, “Heirloom” places the reader in a garden, with mature plants and hands in the soil, “…morning gold leaves now skirt the balcony…” One of my favorites is “Breath” and describing being alone in a library listening to air in the vents and the quietness of it all. If you are adapt with a kitchen knife, “Mise en Place” details the cutting of a fruit into small sections. “Birthday” is a pleasant time, not going to the Blue Grotto, but relaxing at a beach and “the boatman was a bus driver.” To whet the reader’s appetite, is “County Donuts” and “Sugar caked on my lips slips through the air like crystal ice…” For a loved one, there is “Of Late”, describing an aging husband “his lashes flick as I preen the gray at his temples.” Each poem in Sandra Marchetti’s collection gives the reader just enough words to form an idea in the mind, such as … "morning gold leaves now skirt the balcony…” and the reader begins to think of the times they have seen this on their balcony and not noticed the beauty in color. The ideas flow down the page and the relaxing reader thinks of times in their lives, something was similar to this, whether it be traveling or food preparation or seasons of sea and sand or snow and the big city. You want to finish the poem with, “I remember when…” The descriptive words come suddenly, such as “I fixed my goggles to see yellow angels escape me…” Each page in “Diorama” is a pocket of memory in the poetry of Sandra Marchetti.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Marie Asner balances a life of being a poet, freelance writer, book reviewer and entertainment reviewer. The Kansas Arts Commission selected her for a grant on poems of Amelia Earhart and to be part of Kansas Arts on Tour. Marie is a member of the Missouri and Illinois State Poetry Societies. The Rockford Writers Guild and The Kansas Authors Club.
Posted July 1, 2025
The Flight From Meaning by Stephen Haven
Slant Books, 2025 100 pages ISBN: 978-1639821853 Review by jacob erin-cilberto
This is a review of Stephen Haven’s The Flight from Meaning, a book of philosophical poetry with brutish reality in accompaniment.
This book is a very interesting poetic exploration into feelings of war, feelings of post-war, of rich versus poor and the rich becoming the poor. This is poetry that gives us a solar-plexus punch and knocks us out of the ring of metaphor taking our bruises with us, but in a very exhilarating way. The first poem, titled “Rope Tied To A Song: April 30,1975,” speaks of the Vietnam War ending. The speaker shares, “My father, my mother have gone/ to gather their old friends/ …/ American Flags/ Renounce the colors of Love. / Somewhere in Saigon/ there is singing, there is a monk who does not immolate/ Himself in the streets. / The killing still goes on.” Stephen consistently speaks of how “The war goes on” and being “many miles from that place, and yet I feel it/ as a kind of home.” The war still goes on for many who were in Vietnam or other wars. The shrapnel echoes never really leave those who served. Haven’s very insightful and interesting “Three Short Poems” seem to evoke reference to the long-ago past before humans existed, to the past of our country when humans did not act humanely to those who were on this land way before we arrived, a future, with a holiday “that welcomes the New Year/ Full of things that have never been…” In “Wheelbarrow,” which at first look at the title conjures up a recollection of William Carlos Williams’ “Red Wheelbarrow,” creating both a farm scene and a reminder of how this useful tool can be abandoned with disuse. But his poem jars us out of that notion with the first line, “Thin parched pterodactyl/ Tucked wings extended backwards/ stoops at a drainage ditch/ in Ashland, Ohio.” Dinosaurs quenching thirst in modern day. Then, in “Upstate New York Hymn,” he talks of “spring-drunk Chuctanunda/ Its bright dye in that slow gravitas, / the Mohawk’s resurrected dark?” Maybe this is a reminder of our dark past and how we mistreated Native Americans who were here way before we were. But “everything new/ already old, waking to their new names/ And forms, even in the shapes they had before.” In other words, history never seems to teach us, does it? “The killing goes on. Yes, the killing goes on. In “Walden” the poet writes, “Whatever Walden is to me---we swam there two Julys---/ I hope to skirt that never-ending trope, / Drowning like a pilgrim in that pond.” A baptism in death of sorts. We cannot escape aging; we cannot escape ourselves, nor the past mistakes of ourselves, our generation or the generations that came before. The speaker says: “Nowhere fast, he finds the mind Slung in a parenthesis of Sky, as if his head Were helmeted by the entire stratosphere.” This poet, Stephen Haven, fires a stratosphere of images so immense, they reach across many galaxies, but unfortunately for the subject of this particular poem, the images leave “him nowhere, leave him fast.” Haven is a deeply philosophical poet whose words question existence, why it is, why it was and whether it will extend into the future. Or, will we find ourselves left with:
“The promise of a door, two dinner plates, two lit candles an old dying dog” and just a lot of questions as to what really is The Flight from Meaning and why we cannot get close to finding that meaning that eludes every day.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: jacob erin-cilberto is author of 25 books of poetry, his most recent being A Journeyman’s Poems. He teaches at John Logan College and conducts workshops at Heartland Writers Guild, Southern Illinois Writers Guild and Union County Writers Guild.
Posted July 1, 2025
This is a review of Stephen Haven’s The Flight from Meaning, a book of philosophical poetry with brutish reality in accompaniment.
This book is a very interesting poetic exploration into feelings of war, feelings of post-war, of rich versus poor and the rich becoming the poor. This is poetry that gives us a solar-plexus punch and knocks us out of the ring of metaphor taking our bruises with us, but in a very exhilarating way. The first poem, titled “Rope Tied To A Song: April 30,1975,” speaks of the Vietnam War ending. The speaker shares, “My father, my mother have gone/ to gather their old friends/ …/ American Flags/ Renounce the colors of Love. / Somewhere in Saigon/ there is singing, there is a monk who does not immolate/ Himself in the streets. / The killing still goes on.” Stephen consistently speaks of how “The war goes on” and being “many miles from that place, and yet I feel it/ as a kind of home.” The war still goes on for many who were in Vietnam or other wars. The shrapnel echoes never really leave those who served. Haven’s very insightful and interesting “Three Short Poems” seem to evoke reference to the long-ago past before humans existed, to the past of our country when humans did not act humanely to those who were on this land way before we arrived, a future, with a holiday “that welcomes the New Year/ Full of things that have never been…” In “Wheelbarrow,” which at first look at the title conjures up a recollection of William Carlos Williams’ “Red Wheelbarrow,” creating both a farm scene and a reminder of how this useful tool can be abandoned with disuse. But his poem jars us out of that notion with the first line, “Thin parched pterodactyl/ Tucked wings extended backwards/ stoops at a drainage ditch/ in Ashland, Ohio.” Dinosaurs quenching thirst in modern day. Then, in “Upstate New York Hymn,” he talks of “spring-drunk Chuctanunda/ Its bright dye in that slow gravitas, / the Mohawk’s resurrected dark?” Maybe this is a reminder of our dark past and how we mistreated Native Americans who were here way before we were. But “everything new/ already old, waking to their new names/ And forms, even in the shapes they had before.” In other words, history never seems to teach us, does it? “The killing goes on. Yes, the killing goes on. In “Walden” the poet writes, “Whatever Walden is to me---we swam there two Julys---/ I hope to skirt that never-ending trope, / Drowning like a pilgrim in that pond.” A baptism in death of sorts. We cannot escape aging; we cannot escape ourselves, nor the past mistakes of ourselves, our generation or the generations that came before. The speaker says: “Nowhere fast, he finds the mind Slung in a parenthesis of Sky, as if his head Were helmeted by the entire stratosphere.” This poet, Stephen Haven, fires a stratosphere of images so immense, they reach across many galaxies, but unfortunately for the subject of this particular poem, the images leave “him nowhere, leave him fast.” Haven is a deeply philosophical poet whose words question existence, why it is, why it was and whether it will extend into the future. Or, will we find ourselves left with:
“The promise of a door, two dinner plates, two lit candles an old dying dog” and just a lot of questions as to what really is The Flight from Meaning and why we cannot get close to finding that meaning that eludes every day.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: jacob erin-cilberto is author of 25 books of poetry, his most recent being A Journeyman’s Poems. He teaches at John Logan College and conducts workshops at Heartland Writers Guild, Southern Illinois Writers Guild and Union County Writers Guild.
Posted July 1, 2025
Two Emilys by Andrea Potos
Kelsay Books, 2025 47 pages ISBN: 978-1-63980-687-4 Review by Michael Escoubas
Among the yet-to-be-fulfilled items on my bucket list is a visit to Emily Dickinson’s (1830-1886) homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts. This mysterious genius has fascinated me for decades. On the other hand, I know little about Dickinson’s counterpart, British poet Emily Brontë (1818-1848). Reading Two Emilys, Andrea Potos’ latest collection, has been both an education as well as an inspiration. My goal in this review is two-fold: (1) to compare two incomparable poets; and (2) to highlight Andrea’s facility to bring the two Emilys back to life on the poetic page.
Andrea dedicates her collection: For all the Women poets.
This is appropriate to history. Dickinson published a mere handful of poems, less than ten. Brontë published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. Both women labored within an atmosphere adverse to promoting women in the arts.
The book is designed to point and counterpoint each Emily. That is, the poems appear on facing pages as if the three poets are conversing. It is as if Potos knows each Emily well enough to write for both. Potos’s own style merges out of intimate discourse with her subjects.
“Speaking of Poetry,” serves as an umbrella poem:
She said there’s a clarity in each word, like the chandelier that hung in your dining room as a child— stars of blue-white and yellow-gold, even purple and magenta could be found sparking on all the walls; each piece of the chandelier— a teardrop whole and dipped in light— you could see your whole life through it.
Most of the poems are brief; they fit on one page and are designed to channel each Emily as stylistically appropriate. Two examples:
A Stone from Emily Brontë
On the high Yorkshire moor I found it, dark spotted blue and blazed with stars and twilight. One wind-lashed mile away from her parsonage home, I bent down to keep it— dreamed her gaze my own.
Answering poem:
Upon Waking after ED
I’ll tell you how the day began— one dream strand at a time— pictures sifted in gold-burgundy the messages, lie keys, were lost
If I listen carefully, using my imagination, I am close to all three poets in my spirit. These brief poems invite me into their minds, into their lives.
I do not know if Andrea has visited the Brontë home in England but two poems, “Walking the Moor in Spring,” and “Brontëan Morning,” make me wonder . . . both poems invite readers to share in picturesque countryside walks “alongside tall, bent grasses and gorse, / browned by heather and stones and crags.” We hear “The loudest crows / cawing over the tops of the oaks / call me to autumn already / and though my back is the window, . . . I feel the gorse / grazing my ankles as I go.”
I also appreciate the historical perspective offered about each poet. In an age of presumed religiosity, Dickinson was not always in tune with conventional thinking as demonstrated by “Emily Dickinson Stays Home When Ralph Waldo Emerson Visits Her Brother’s House:
Let there be no argument from the grass between my brother’s house and mine. No need to touch flesh—
like the Word, he must glow. Hadn’t we met in that place where Dream is born—
I remember—Soul sparks erupted—I felt my own ignite— in my ear—the Mountains straight reply.
“To Emily Brontë” is Andrea’s letter to Brontë reimagining her eleven-year-old self “sunk in the red velveteen / chair and the Fox Bay Theater.” There she is absorbed by scenes from Wuthering Hights. Scenes depicting Yorkshire moors, Heathcliff’s sea-green eyes, pathos of love and loss that captured the poetry protégé’s blooming imagination.
Other titles not to overlook include, “To the College Girl Who Sold The Life of Emily Dickinson,” “A Reading in Emily’s House,” “The Last Unread Poems of Charlotte Brontë, March 2022,” and “When Any Word Came Near Emily Dickinson’s Name.” These poems and more (indeed every poem makes the list) but space is limited.
I close with “Some Advice from Emily,” to which the other Emily would happily signature as worthy advice:
Keep words brief, bound-tight
think of that quick-startle— fingertip on stovetop—
that one breath, throat-caught seconds before the reveal.
Ah yes, that “quick-startle,” is a phrase aptly suited to Andrea Potos’s stellar collection. No poem disappointed this review . . . five stars + for this book, underpriced at $17.00.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted July 1, 2025
Among the yet-to-be-fulfilled items on my bucket list is a visit to Emily Dickinson’s (1830-1886) homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts. This mysterious genius has fascinated me for decades. On the other hand, I know little about Dickinson’s counterpart, British poet Emily Brontë (1818-1848). Reading Two Emilys, Andrea Potos’ latest collection, has been both an education as well as an inspiration. My goal in this review is two-fold: (1) to compare two incomparable poets; and (2) to highlight Andrea’s facility to bring the two Emilys back to life on the poetic page.
Andrea dedicates her collection: For all the Women poets.
This is appropriate to history. Dickinson published a mere handful of poems, less than ten. Brontë published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. Both women labored within an atmosphere adverse to promoting women in the arts.
The book is designed to point and counterpoint each Emily. That is, the poems appear on facing pages as if the three poets are conversing. It is as if Potos knows each Emily well enough to write for both. Potos’s own style merges out of intimate discourse with her subjects.
“Speaking of Poetry,” serves as an umbrella poem:
She said there’s a clarity in each word, like the chandelier that hung in your dining room as a child— stars of blue-white and yellow-gold, even purple and magenta could be found sparking on all the walls; each piece of the chandelier— a teardrop whole and dipped in light— you could see your whole life through it.
Most of the poems are brief; they fit on one page and are designed to channel each Emily as stylistically appropriate. Two examples:
A Stone from Emily Brontë
On the high Yorkshire moor I found it, dark spotted blue and blazed with stars and twilight. One wind-lashed mile away from her parsonage home, I bent down to keep it— dreamed her gaze my own.
Answering poem:
Upon Waking after ED
I’ll tell you how the day began— one dream strand at a time— pictures sifted in gold-burgundy the messages, lie keys, were lost
If I listen carefully, using my imagination, I am close to all three poets in my spirit. These brief poems invite me into their minds, into their lives.
I do not know if Andrea has visited the Brontë home in England but two poems, “Walking the Moor in Spring,” and “Brontëan Morning,” make me wonder . . . both poems invite readers to share in picturesque countryside walks “alongside tall, bent grasses and gorse, / browned by heather and stones and crags.” We hear “The loudest crows / cawing over the tops of the oaks / call me to autumn already / and though my back is the window, . . . I feel the gorse / grazing my ankles as I go.”
I also appreciate the historical perspective offered about each poet. In an age of presumed religiosity, Dickinson was not always in tune with conventional thinking as demonstrated by “Emily Dickinson Stays Home When Ralph Waldo Emerson Visits Her Brother’s House:
Let there be no argument from the grass between my brother’s house and mine. No need to touch flesh—
like the Word, he must glow. Hadn’t we met in that place where Dream is born—
I remember—Soul sparks erupted—I felt my own ignite— in my ear—the Mountains straight reply.
“To Emily Brontë” is Andrea’s letter to Brontë reimagining her eleven-year-old self “sunk in the red velveteen / chair and the Fox Bay Theater.” There she is absorbed by scenes from Wuthering Hights. Scenes depicting Yorkshire moors, Heathcliff’s sea-green eyes, pathos of love and loss that captured the poetry protégé’s blooming imagination.
Other titles not to overlook include, “To the College Girl Who Sold The Life of Emily Dickinson,” “A Reading in Emily’s House,” “The Last Unread Poems of Charlotte Brontë, March 2022,” and “When Any Word Came Near Emily Dickinson’s Name.” These poems and more (indeed every poem makes the list) but space is limited.
I close with “Some Advice from Emily,” to which the other Emily would happily signature as worthy advice:
Keep words brief, bound-tight
think of that quick-startle— fingertip on stovetop—
that one breath, throat-caught seconds before the reveal.
Ah yes, that “quick-startle,” is a phrase aptly suited to Andrea Potos’s stellar collection. No poem disappointed this review . . . five stars + for this book, underpriced at $17.00.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted July 1, 2025
Nothing Louche or Bohemian by Tina Cole & Michael W. Thomas
Black Pear Press, 2025 41 pages ISBN: 978-1-916910-27-0Review by Marie Asner
Poets Tina Cole and Michael W. Thomas live in Great Britain and have written a group of poems rich in memory and given to the reader as a glimpse of the past. Memories linger in the background of the mind, and a fondness for certain moments is always there. Tina Cole has published pamphlets including “What it Was” and "Forged." She conducts workshops for adults and children and has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University. Michael W. Thomas has published “A Time for Such a Word,” and “Sing Ho! Stout Cortez: Novella and Stories,” both from Black Pear Press. His work has appeared in The Antigonish Review (Canada), Dream Catcher Etchings (Australia) and Magazine Six (USA).
Memories are related to people or things or places. Using language and descriptions that may bring something to mind are here to read. The first poem in the collection is by Tina Cole called “Open the Box” which is an invitation to open, read and reflect on what box you may have. This one was found on the top shelf of a closet and the reader may say, “Oh, yes, we have one, too.” Driving past a now deserted country road in “Unmapped” brings on a memory of country roads that lead to fishing ponds or a relative’s farm with a litter of pups to play with. Tina Cole takes the reader on a journey to “Mrs. MacIntyre” a teacher, in a poem of two verses, the second verse of which is reversed in form. “Piano Teacher” “your hands arching and lithe, rain cold fingers tinkering a crazy ragtime.” In the “The Art of Knitting” -“Knitting kept her old heart warm, wrapped in rabbit wool she knew the art of casting off the pull of memories.”
Michael W. Thomas writes in “Dad in a Morning—December 1962” about his father, an electrician, going to work at Christmas time “and valleys of wire need his sparky magic to keep all on the pulse.” Then, also, this memory of the past, “I still have his “Electrical Yearbook…Unfussy as the Book of Common Prayer.” An ode to a man who helped keep a town running with power. However, there is another power in the household, a mother who is also a Nurse-on-Call, and at the beckon of a ringing phone. The father works with machinery while the mother works with life. In “Pity Phones” there comes, not an ordinary call for help, but a child’s trauma.
The style of the authors complement each other, going from one sentiment to another, and allowing the reader time to think through what just happened. Some poems are written in stanza form while another is all italics. The variety recalls memories from long ago, a person or an incident one has seen and can’t forget, a house that once was home, a special toy or a nighttime view of an airplane overhead among the silver stars. Only this on clear nights before fog rolls in. All are here within the grasp of writing.
Tina Cole writes about a favorite toy in “Heirloom.” “Taffy, a Chad Valley original in toffee mohair fully jointed with pad paws.” However, there can be another viewpoint of nostalgia toward a deceased pet, “I buried the dog in his basket with its bowl.” But this comes with a twist. There is always something special to remember and Tina Cole has “Intoxication” with “It’s all in the way you look at things, in the way one’s hand reaches out for beauty.” When you leave a place, you have memories of certain parts of that place, especially a live-in house, but do you really know what else remembers? Michael W. Thomas tells us in “Cats Fed”: “Outside, I turn for one last look at the house…. birthdays, the heaping wakefulness of Christmas, the sandcastle dreams…. somewhere in there they begin, the little songs a house sings to itself.” There is the classmate, a grade school girl named “Jacqueline Burnett” and important because of a birthday. Seeing life on a different plane is “Somersault” and “Slowly I somersault through autumn; the air is close but soft.”
“Nothing Louche or Bohemian” is a poetry collection of memories to share. A book of the past that reflects life as it was then, calm and moving at a slower pace. From people to places to occupations, there is a continuity that flows with words from one page to another and one person to another. Time moves at its own pace here, one memory after another and will remind the reader of their own special memories.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Marie Asner balances a life of being a poet, freelance writer, book reviewer and entertainment reviewer. The Kansas Arts Commission selected her for a grant on poems of Amelia Earhart and to be part of Kansas Arts on Tour. Marie is a member of the Missouri and Illinois State Poetry Societies. The Rockford Writers Guild and The Kansas Authors Club. Marie was inspired to pen the below by the experience of getting this book in the mail. A Literary Journey, a poem by Marie Asner The poetry verses were written with care. Years in the making, memories poured onto the page. Off to the printer for proper presentation, and then travels of the book began. Book stores and book readings, all on the continent, until one day, there was a request for a copy to review---- across the Atlantic to the United States and entering therein, the state of Kansas. So, the poetry book began its travels from hand to envelope to postal station to airplane to New York City and finally to Kansas. However, the book arrived when tornado warnings were sounding, winds howling, lightning flashing and thunderheads striking their colossal beat. It was at this time, that the recipient of the book was huddled in the basement, watching garage doors bend in and out from wind gusts. A clanking sound was heard. Hark? It is the mailman, doing his duty by day or by night, rain or snow, hurricane or tornado, the mail was delivered. Poetry book, intact, but frightened, was taken out of its white encasement. Then, what it cherished most--- someone began to read its contents. Fulfillment, at last.
Posted June 1, 2025
Poets Tina Cole and Michael W. Thomas live in Great Britain and have written a group of poems rich in memory and given to the reader as a glimpse of the past. Memories linger in the background of the mind, and a fondness for certain moments is always there. Tina Cole has published pamphlets including “What it Was” and "Forged." She conducts workshops for adults and children and has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University. Michael W. Thomas has published “A Time for Such a Word,” and “Sing Ho! Stout Cortez: Novella and Stories,” both from Black Pear Press. His work has appeared in The Antigonish Review (Canada), Dream Catcher Etchings (Australia) and Magazine Six (USA).
Memories are related to people or things or places. Using language and descriptions that may bring something to mind are here to read. The first poem in the collection is by Tina Cole called “Open the Box” which is an invitation to open, read and reflect on what box you may have. This one was found on the top shelf of a closet and the reader may say, “Oh, yes, we have one, too.” Driving past a now deserted country road in “Unmapped” brings on a memory of country roads that lead to fishing ponds or a relative’s farm with a litter of pups to play with. Tina Cole takes the reader on a journey to “Mrs. MacIntyre” a teacher, in a poem of two verses, the second verse of which is reversed in form. “Piano Teacher” “your hands arching and lithe, rain cold fingers tinkering a crazy ragtime.” In the “The Art of Knitting” -“Knitting kept her old heart warm, wrapped in rabbit wool she knew the art of casting off the pull of memories.”
Michael W. Thomas writes in “Dad in a Morning—December 1962” about his father, an electrician, going to work at Christmas time “and valleys of wire need his sparky magic to keep all on the pulse.” Then, also, this memory of the past, “I still have his “Electrical Yearbook…Unfussy as the Book of Common Prayer.” An ode to a man who helped keep a town running with power. However, there is another power in the household, a mother who is also a Nurse-on-Call, and at the beckon of a ringing phone. The father works with machinery while the mother works with life. In “Pity Phones” there comes, not an ordinary call for help, but a child’s trauma.
The style of the authors complement each other, going from one sentiment to another, and allowing the reader time to think through what just happened. Some poems are written in stanza form while another is all italics. The variety recalls memories from long ago, a person or an incident one has seen and can’t forget, a house that once was home, a special toy or a nighttime view of an airplane overhead among the silver stars. Only this on clear nights before fog rolls in. All are here within the grasp of writing.
Tina Cole writes about a favorite toy in “Heirloom.” “Taffy, a Chad Valley original in toffee mohair fully jointed with pad paws.” However, there can be another viewpoint of nostalgia toward a deceased pet, “I buried the dog in his basket with its bowl.” But this comes with a twist. There is always something special to remember and Tina Cole has “Intoxication” with “It’s all in the way you look at things, in the way one’s hand reaches out for beauty.” When you leave a place, you have memories of certain parts of that place, especially a live-in house, but do you really know what else remembers? Michael W. Thomas tells us in “Cats Fed”: “Outside, I turn for one last look at the house…. birthdays, the heaping wakefulness of Christmas, the sandcastle dreams…. somewhere in there they begin, the little songs a house sings to itself.” There is the classmate, a grade school girl named “Jacqueline Burnett” and important because of a birthday. Seeing life on a different plane is “Somersault” and “Slowly I somersault through autumn; the air is close but soft.”
“Nothing Louche or Bohemian” is a poetry collection of memories to share. A book of the past that reflects life as it was then, calm and moving at a slower pace. From people to places to occupations, there is a continuity that flows with words from one page to another and one person to another. Time moves at its own pace here, one memory after another and will remind the reader of their own special memories.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Marie Asner balances a life of being a poet, freelance writer, book reviewer and entertainment reviewer. The Kansas Arts Commission selected her for a grant on poems of Amelia Earhart and to be part of Kansas Arts on Tour. Marie is a member of the Missouri and Illinois State Poetry Societies. The Rockford Writers Guild and The Kansas Authors Club. Marie was inspired to pen the below by the experience of getting this book in the mail. A Literary Journey, a poem by Marie Asner The poetry verses were written with care. Years in the making, memories poured onto the page. Off to the printer for proper presentation, and then travels of the book began. Book stores and book readings, all on the continent, until one day, there was a request for a copy to review---- across the Atlantic to the United States and entering therein, the state of Kansas. So, the poetry book began its travels from hand to envelope to postal station to airplane to New York City and finally to Kansas. However, the book arrived when tornado warnings were sounding, winds howling, lightning flashing and thunderheads striking their colossal beat. It was at this time, that the recipient of the book was huddled in the basement, watching garage doors bend in and out from wind gusts. A clanking sound was heard. Hark? It is the mailman, doing his duty by day or by night, rain or snow, hurricane or tornado, the mail was delivered. Poetry book, intact, but frightened, was taken out of its white encasement. Then, what it cherished most--- someone began to read its contents. Fulfillment, at last.
Posted June 1, 2025
A Yellowed Notebook by Beth SKMorris
unispeech, 2025 95 pages ISBN: 979-8218569662 Review by jacob erin-cilberto
Many of us preserve a litany of memories of our fathers. A very select few can put that litany into an array of intense poems paying homage to whom we consider a great man. This collection of poetry by Beth SKMorris is a brilliant mesh of her own works combined with illustrations of her father’s life in snippets of his poetry, snapshots of his baseball cards, war memorabilia and other scraps collected which show her father actually was in life and who he was in her perspective.
She writes, “My father was a whistler---/ pop songs, operatic arias, all four movements of Beethoven’s Fifth.” In this poem, she also shares, “listening to Nat King Cole on our portable./ lathered in baby oil, faces tilted to the sun, / my sister smoking her purloined Pall Malls.” These lines are most interesting given they present the combined voices of a father and daughter, much like the duets put together by Natalie Cole to display what would have been had she and her father gotten to sing duets.
I related to the sister smoking Pall Malls. The unfiltered cigarettes much like the unfiltered life her father led. And I remember how I “purloined my father’s Salems to sneak a puff here and there in secret.
In “How to Get Attention From a Father Who Works Three Jobs,” we are reminded of how it was back when fathers garnered the label of “Absentee Father” because they were so busy providing for us, they had little time to nurture us. One of this poet’s ploys to get attention states:
“hide his favorite Fanny Farmer Chocolates before he gets home: under towels in the linen closet, inside mother’s hat boxes, the laundry hamper--- laugh at his frustration, fruitless search for the box, the midnight treasure hunt you send him on again and again---”
(I used to find places to hide my dad’s wrench in his tool closet---drove him crazy.)
On one page, Beth includes this blurb about her father:
David G. Kaplan (December 26, 1977) “Besides being a practicing furrier, he was for many years Chairman of the Fur Department at the High School of Fashion Industries…” Fur Age Weekly
SKMorris further shares her admiration for this man. She departs from the emotional attachment to be objective, showing us his greatness as a businessman.
In “At the Factory,” Beth writes of her father’s “Surgeon-like precision, searched/ for imperfections: uneven stitching.” He not only restitched imperfections of her life but also his own imperfections.
“repaired his own body With wedges that would Sustain him into old age.”
Again, as a reader I am relating to her words. My dad stitched together a strong life, even with imperfections---he restitched mine as well as his own and lived to be almost 98.In “Because” she writes:
“The code blue alarm sounded, I stepped out into the hallway, the nurses ran to his bedside, the Doctor wept--- my father was gone----”
Many wept when my father died in the dementia unit. Those who only knew him there not as I had throughout his and my life.
But what Beth gives us in this “Yellowed Notebook” are pages of a beautiful kinship in which a daughter shows great respect and admiration, and of course, Love, for a father who did as most fathers do, the best they can.
It is hard to read this poetry book without finding ourselves immersed in memory and love for our own fathers.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: jacob erin-cilberto is author of 25 books of poetry, his most recent being A Journeyman’s Poems. He teaches at John Logan College and conducts workshops at Heartland Writers Guild, Southern Illinois Writers Guild and Union County Writers Guild.
Posted June 1, 2025
Many of us preserve a litany of memories of our fathers. A very select few can put that litany into an array of intense poems paying homage to whom we consider a great man. This collection of poetry by Beth SKMorris is a brilliant mesh of her own works combined with illustrations of her father’s life in snippets of his poetry, snapshots of his baseball cards, war memorabilia and other scraps collected which show her father actually was in life and who he was in her perspective.
She writes, “My father was a whistler---/ pop songs, operatic arias, all four movements of Beethoven’s Fifth.” In this poem, she also shares, “listening to Nat King Cole on our portable./ lathered in baby oil, faces tilted to the sun, / my sister smoking her purloined Pall Malls.” These lines are most interesting given they present the combined voices of a father and daughter, much like the duets put together by Natalie Cole to display what would have been had she and her father gotten to sing duets.
I related to the sister smoking Pall Malls. The unfiltered cigarettes much like the unfiltered life her father led. And I remember how I “purloined my father’s Salems to sneak a puff here and there in secret.
In “How to Get Attention From a Father Who Works Three Jobs,” we are reminded of how it was back when fathers garnered the label of “Absentee Father” because they were so busy providing for us, they had little time to nurture us. One of this poet’s ploys to get attention states:
“hide his favorite Fanny Farmer Chocolates before he gets home: under towels in the linen closet, inside mother’s hat boxes, the laundry hamper--- laugh at his frustration, fruitless search for the box, the midnight treasure hunt you send him on again and again---”
(I used to find places to hide my dad’s wrench in his tool closet---drove him crazy.)
On one page, Beth includes this blurb about her father:
David G. Kaplan (December 26, 1977) “Besides being a practicing furrier, he was for many years Chairman of the Fur Department at the High School of Fashion Industries…” Fur Age Weekly
SKMorris further shares her admiration for this man. She departs from the emotional attachment to be objective, showing us his greatness as a businessman.
In “At the Factory,” Beth writes of her father’s “Surgeon-like precision, searched/ for imperfections: uneven stitching.” He not only restitched imperfections of her life but also his own imperfections.
“repaired his own body With wedges that would Sustain him into old age.”
Again, as a reader I am relating to her words. My dad stitched together a strong life, even with imperfections---he restitched mine as well as his own and lived to be almost 98.In “Because” she writes:
“The code blue alarm sounded, I stepped out into the hallway, the nurses ran to his bedside, the Doctor wept--- my father was gone----”
Many wept when my father died in the dementia unit. Those who only knew him there not as I had throughout his and my life.
But what Beth gives us in this “Yellowed Notebook” are pages of a beautiful kinship in which a daughter shows great respect and admiration, and of course, Love, for a father who did as most fathers do, the best they can.
It is hard to read this poetry book without finding ourselves immersed in memory and love for our own fathers.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: jacob erin-cilberto is author of 25 books of poetry, his most recent being A Journeyman’s Poems. He teaches at John Logan College and conducts workshops at Heartland Writers Guild, Southern Illinois Writers Guild and Union County Writers Guild.
Posted June 1, 2025
Gatherings: Poems by Dan Fitzgerald
32 Poems ~ 46 pages
Price: $17.00
Publisher: Kelsay Books
ISBN: 978-1-63980-697-3
Review by Michael Escoubas
No less a luminary than John Keats had this to say about why poets write poetry:
Poetry should strike the reader as a wording of his
own highest thoughts, and appear
almost as a remembrance.
Keats observation resonated as I took a deep dive into Gatherings, Dan Fitzgerald’s latest collection. What stood out to me was Fitzgerald’s love of life, his commitment to looking for and finding beauty and spiritual sustenance on planet earth. Moreover, Gatherings is “plural,” which suggests a variety of gatherings the poet intends to explore.
Fitzgerald leads with “A Collection of Things.” This poem features common things “gathered” within his home: pictures on the wall, “Picked up over the years, / some cared for with love, / some hung to fill a spot.” Each picture has a story to tell, holds a special place in the poet’s life. They hang by the same things I have in my own home: screws, nails, wires, strings . . . a kind of life-definition . . . we’re “a collection of things.”
Considering Keats’ axiom that thoughts appear “almost as a remembrance,” “Never Getting Done,” highlights Fitzgerald’s delightful use of irony:
I can’t believe how much time
I waste in a day:
distracted by birds at a fountain,
waylaid by a book found
idle on a table,
ambushed by clouds proud
to be in the sky.
There was that time
when half a day was lost
just talking to an old friend.
And all that time down by the river,
just listening, watching, pondering
how many ways water flows over stones.
It is no wonder I never
get anything done.
This poem refreshes me; it takes me back to my youth, when I held my head under a deep-well pump on 95-degree days in July. Wasting time? Let’s waste more time with such poetry.
“Campfire Smoke Rises,” highlights Fitzgerald’s facility with sound and outdoorsy ambiance: “Campfire smoke rises like incense / as the crackling prayers of flames / burn the stacked wood to ash.” The poem continues with brushstrokes that paint “Stars that blink in the night through milky clouds,” and “fire flares in the dark.” The campfire becomes a kind of “sacrament” as voices “mix with the rising smoke.” The whole poem becomes a mystical experience within the space of a mere seventeen lines.
“Helping Out,” is a gathering of light sources; a varying of senses, shadows, a buffer against that which might otherwise take us down. Here is an excerpt:
I light a candle
from time to time.
There are all kinds scattered
around my rooms:
small votives, three inch pillars,
tapers long and short.
The poet subtlety marries his penchant for candles to practical experiences that define his life:
The one burning now, I lit
this morning when I got out of bed.
This day felt like it needed
a little help to move on its way.
His very surroundings become “gatherings” around which life coalesces. Fitzgerald captures another example of this in “Childhood Picture Gifts.” The poet discovers a long-lost envelope of pictures drawn during his childhood. They had been “resting” in a drawer as if waiting to be rediscovered . . . a blessing deferred.
I return to Keats’ axiom as the poet reflects on what “The Years,” have meant:
Poetry should strike the reader as a wording of his
own highest thoughts, and appear
almost as a remembrance.
They sit together,
the years,
talking among themselves,
telling old stories,
the occasional old lie.
New things come to them
as the days add up,
making one more year
to join the group.
They seem happy enough,
Even though some have seen
rough times.
Content in a way,
Though a little weary
that there are so many of them now.
I don’t know what to say
to them anymore.
They have heard so much
from me already.
So mostly, I just listen
letting them talk.
They seem pretty good
at telling me what I need
to know.
I am confident that John Keats would agree. Gatherings is underpriced at $17.00.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted June 1, 2025
Night Music by B. J. Buckley
49 Poems ~ 69 pages
Cover Art: Winter Night, by Dawn Senior-Trask
Price: $22.99
Publisher: Finishing Line Press
ISBN: 979-8-88838-813-6
Review by Michael Escoubas
B.J. Buckley’s Night Music features Buckley’s responses to three influential artists: Japanese painter, Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), composer Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin (1810-1849), and Pablo Neruda (1904-1973). All three lived as unequaled practitioners in their respective fields: painter, composer, and poet.
In casual conversations with the poet, I learned that the poems in Night Music took years of focused study to complete. In depth research into the lives of her subjects along with immersion into their artistic techniques has yielded a superior collection.
Buckley dedicates Night Music to cover artist Dawn Senior-Trask, her lifelong friend, no doubt because their minds and creative values share the same rarified air. Buckley also quotes an important saying by Leonardo da Vinci in her dedication:
Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt,
and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.
This famous insight serves as a guiding principle for Buckley, a principle she implements consistently into her compositions.
Night Music is organized into three divisions: “Hiroshige’s Mistress,” “Playing the Nocturnes,” and “Love and Sorrow.” The poems in each division embrace da Vinci’s maxim.
Here’s an example from “Full Moon, Late September,” in which the poet studies red:
Stillness, empty of
all motion, upon which float
rafts of fallen leaves. ‘
Vermilion, scarlet, crimson,
burgundy, rust, carnelian—
I visualize the early autumn moon revealing color nuances, the stillness itself, a kind of caesura, blends into Buckley’s title as a significant musical component.
“Hiroshige’s Mistress: Her Pillow Book” is the lead poem in a section comprised of seven love poems. “Pillow Book” features twenty-seven poems written as extended haiku. Typically, each poem consists of five lines or less. They are gorgeously erotic:
The moon is drunk on
the sweet wine of my body—
Why, your empty glass?
Every maple, flaming pyre—
if leaves were tears—wind, crying.
Or this:
Open blossoms, rain-
filled, overflowing—scattered
on the damp earth, their
petals, red, each one a flame—
Across my floor, dropped garments.
One senses Chopin’s “mood” music in “Playing the Nocturnes.” The poet has invested time in Chopin’s compositions. She listened to their melodies as they played on the strings of her heart. Each poem bears the title of the dominant key in which Chopin composed the piece: #1 in B-flat minor, #2 in E-flat major, #3 in B major, etc. Buckley has written a poem for each of Chopin’s twenty-one nocturnes. Here is #5 in F-sharp major:
The birds, so quiet all day
in the deep cold
break their hunger—
last gathering—
sparrows,
finches,
nuthatches in pairs
mining crevices
of bark.
And ravens, the black uncles, sorrowing
in the stripped carcass
of a deer.
Red-tail hawk. A stillness
with wings.
I was totally mesmerized when I heard several of these pieces played by pianist Arthur Rubinstein. Buckley spent an entire year relearning how to play the piano, listening to Rubenstein and other classical artists play these masterpieces.
By my count Buckley’s poems feature dozens of hooved animals, fowls, fishes, felines, and trees and grasses of every description. In all three sections, Buckley skillfully weaves natural-world beauty and mystery into the warp and woof of her compositions.
Section three “Love and Sorrow,” focuses on Pablo Neruda’s love poems. Written at the virile age of nineteen, Neruda’s work is a rich mine of sensory material. Here Buckley’s use of poetic tools rises to the surface “The Wind is Washing the Leaves,” is reproduced below in full:
The wind is washing the leaves and hanging them to dry
on the slenderest twigs, the thinnest branches, the wind
is laundering the old clothes worn by willow and cottonwood,
so ragged, so yellow, torn and spattered insect wing, burned
by early frosts. If I had a shirt with a frayed collar a small
stain, loose button hanging by a blue thread like a tiny
moon suspended from a pocket, I could let the wind
take it up in her hands, I could let the air’s clean body
pretend, for awhile, that it loved me, though we both
were so poor, and dressed in rags.
You may have noticed that this poem consists of two extended sentences. The lines are paced and nurtured as one in love might let thoughts and words “wash out” with the wind.
Patterning her poems after Neruda, using free form with lineage varying from ten-syllables to fourteen, Buckley “lets herself go,” like a blues musician following the music wherever it leads. I wonder what notes the poet was hearing when she wrote:
Any part of you would be enough, enough for me—
the softness of your hair scattered across my pillow.
Pick up a copy of Night Music and be immersed in the sights, sounds, and mysteries of love. You may well decide to compose your own “night music.”
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted June 1, 2025
Traveling Through Time: Collected Poems by William Marr
953 Poems ~ 452 Pages ~ 1956 – 2025
Price: Free
Downloadable Link
https://alharris.com/william-marr/traveling.pdf
Review by Michael Escoubas
Now in his eighth decade, William Marr has published over 30 poetry books. A bilinguist, his poetry collections include translations in Chinese, English, bilingual translations in Chinese and English, as well as translations in French, Italian, and one Korean translation. Traveling Through Time: Collected Poems is a gift. It is a gift, not because it is “free,” but because its artistic craftsmanship has stood the test of time.
Poet Philip Larkin in his poem entitled “Days” had this to say about time:
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
Indeed, Bill Marr understands “days.” He understands “time.” Traveling Through Time begins in 1956. Awareness of time is a thread woven throughout the work beginning with his 1956 poem “At the Mountainside”:
I met a little boy at a mountainside
who was quick to laugh and cry
tears had hardly rolled down his cheeks
when a sweet smile bloomed at the corner of his mouth
there was nothing purer than his sparkling tears
nothing more beautiful than his angelic face
I understood the intention of the Creator
and was moved by the child’s innocence
I stared at him with a deep feeling
warmth flooded my heart
tears of gratitude welled up in my eyes
when I looked again he was gone
In this epiphany, Marr treats his reader to a visionary ideal in human form. This “purity” of sparkling tears and “angelic” face cannot be captured and held as one’s own. The poet is delighted to have been granted this foretaste of glory, a glimpse he happily shares.
In “Harbor” (1957) Marr combines personification, contrast, and irony to convey the “chilling” feeling, captured by a moment in time, when a beloved child departs to go his own way:
1
the harbor was asleep
when the fog moved in
a strange beast in her nightmare
licked her with its wet tongue
she woke to find the world
weeping
2
watching helplessly the departure
of a roaming son
she wondered why
she had to be a southern port
that never freezes
I remember well the Go-Go dance craze of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Marr uses it here in a subtle commentary on life and on the Vietnam war:
Go-Go Dancing
Shedding shedding shedding
your arms her hair my loneliness
Restless heels are red and swollen
the journey of life is long and without end
Desperate are the besieged souls
sallying forth at every beat of the war drums
and the horns are stretching their long necks
calling you calling you calling you
a string of ominous names
Darling
Why are you shivering?
By way of subjects, William Marr’s poetry knows, no limits. His poems are about family, faith, war, love, hate, animals, the natural world, politics, the environment, current events, and more. Humor, satire, irony, personification, alliteration, enjambment, and surprise endings, are just a few of his tools. His poems are cryptic. This is characteristic of Asian poets who think and write in pictures. A word of caution: Marr does not coddle his readers. He expects “us” to “do our part” by reading his poems slowly and thoughtfully. As I prepared to write my review, I was rewarded manyfold by doing this.
“Watching Snow from the Window,” reminds me of Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” Marr, like Stevens, is less concerned about the obvious subject of his poem than about the life-perspectives embedded within it:
1
black men’s
white teeth
no longer showing
good tempers
2
a piece of snow on the branch
suddenly falls
when the bird with a frozen song
flies away
3
as the footprints in the snow
get deeper and deeper
they become harder and harder
to comprehend
4
Falling on the feverish face of
a homesick boy
the snow melts and turns into
a warm tropical shower
5
coldness makes us independent
we carefully hold our breath
as long as the sun won’t show its face
we are certain to have a white Christmas
6
in the wind
the trembling hands of a withered tree
open upward
the dormant seeds in the cracked soil
are ready to sprout
7
A sudden toll
of the steeple bell
shakes down
the snow from the Cross
Marr’s poems contain “layered” meanings. That is, they are open to a range of interpretations and life-applications. For example, “At the Concert” (1970) can be interpreted both literally as well as figuratively: “thick and heavy / music rains down / like a net // choked on surging waves / in its flight / a panicky soul / bursts out / an earth-shattering cough.”
Well known for his animal poems, Marr (from 1981) delighted me with poems about: goats, tigers, bald eagles, a rooster, dogs, ducks, cats, horses, snakes, dragons, a caged lion and more. “The Goat,” channels the poet’s crusty grand-father:
standing erect on a cliff
was my stern
grandfather
in a dark night
they woke me up from my dream
and took the acrophobic me to him
asking me to touch his whiskers
with my sweaty palm
and to jump over the black
generation gap
In a mere eight lines Marr conveys a deep understanding about war:
War Arithmetic
Both sides claim
numerous enemies have been killed
Both sides declare
we’ve suffered no losses
Nobody understands
the arithmetic of war
Only the fallen
know the number
Throughout this amazing collection Marr demonstrates a profound sensitivity to civilization’s conundrums. “The Great Wall,” among Mainland China’s most distinguishing features, stands out in this regard:
1
The struggle between civilization
and barbarism
must be ferocious
See this Great Wall
it twists and turns
with no end in sight
2
What valor
to climb the ragged ridge
and to look long and hard
through a self-adjusting lens
at the skeleton of the dragon
sprawling miles and miles
in the wasteland
of time
The poetry of Traveling Through Time is a journey which entertains, educates, and inspires the human spirit to new heights of joy.
In his heart, Bill Marr sees the good that is available to all who have the will to look for it. For me, “A Poetry Garden” strikes a timeless theme that weaves like a golden thread from beginning to end:
The poems written on earth
with your shovel
they claim
though beautiful
will wither easily
This
I know
is just their jealousy or superstition
Because on this side of the earth
my heart is responding
to your every steady and forceful pounding
And I believe
the beautiful words and wonderful music
flashing up from the rocks underneath your feet
will light up countless eyes and hearts
in dark nights
*For my Taiwanese poet friend Yang Kui, who retired in his old age to cultivate gardens alone in the deep mountains.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted June 1, 2025
Posted June 1, 2025
Laughing in Yiddish by Jamie Wendt
Broadstone Books, 2025
85 pages
ISBN: 978-1-956782-96-7
$25
Review by Lois Baer Barr
Laughing in Yiddish is no laughing matter. It is a survival skill developed over centuries of exclusion, expulsion, and pogroms. Jamie Wendt’s book explores Eastern European Jewish DNA and creates a cultural map of wandering, through a deep dive into her personal history as well as the history of Jewish immigrants in Chicago. Her ancestors immigrated to America from Russia in the 19th century and then to Chicago just before the turn of the century. Historic landmarks, such as Maxwell Street, New York’s Glass Castle, Babi Yar, and Kishinev, leave deep impressions on the poet’s sense of a collective past. Many of the poems derive from her research into S. Ansky’s ethnographic study of shtetl life containing photographs by Solomon Iudovin. The other major sources are oral history of her own family and the artwork of an important but lesser-known Chicago artist Todros Geller.
The three opening poems invoke the Ushpizin, who must be invited and honored in the sukkah, the booth Jews build for the harvest festival of Sukkoth. Celebrating with her children, the poet introduces her forebears, sweet ghosts who join Abraham and Sarah, the traditional guests of the holiday. But her message is stark. “Ash is in your bones,” (3) she tells her children. The next two poems invoke matriarchs. Although it is traditional to invite Sarah, who is included with Abraham for the first night, Wendt writes instead about Yoheved, Moses’s mother. In this persona poem, Yoheved vows to save her first born son from Pharoah’s cruel decree.
I will always be waiting within the sand city, my breath among the reeds, weaving the wind with a lullaby that will save my son.
Next the poet invokes her great grandmother Sadelle Freeman in another persona poem set in Hot Springs, Arkansas in 1941. Her grandmother had gone to find a cure for her rheumatism. She found herself an outsider, she didn’t fit in with the white Christian society or the black society. The fourth poem is a persona poem in which Odessa-born artist Todros Geller speaks of his estrangement. “Goats Evade Demands and Chains” is an ekphrastic poem treating a woodcut from a 1930 book, Land to Land. A master of many forms, Wendt includes pantoums, ghazals, a triolet, a prose poem, and many ekphrastic poems. “Colossal Music,” for example, is based on a Chagall painting of a fiddler. She uses the ghazal in “Ner Tamid” (Everlasting Light) to weave work of the ghetto with the work of the woodcut artist Todros. In this poem poet and artist honor the skill of the shoemaker by casting his work as holy and eternal. Persona poems predominate. The Eisenhower Expressway speaks in two poems. It’s hard to pick a favorite in this fine collection, but I have read and reread “The Eisenhower Expressway Speaks, 1951.” While both poems deal with the destruction of neighborhoods and the upheaval created by the building of the expressway, there is also a touch of whimsy. The construction site becomes a playground for boys in “After summer storms/I turn into a brown river.” (48) But as always there is darkness which here becomes macabre. After the removal of a cemetery, another rain leaves bones for the boys to gather like dogs in a game of fetch. Wendt’s light touch allows us to read about miscarriages, ghosts, dead butterflies, a son born with low expectations for survival. Other poems deal with pogroms in Kishniev and Kuziai Forest Lithuania. These tragic events are redeemed by their beauty. The imagery is striking and original as she points out how history repeats itself. AFTER READING BIALIK’S “IN THE CITY OF SLAUGHTER” In Israel and Gaza, homes and houses of worship cave in like a woman huddled over her pregnant belly. Screams of sliced pain stretch the length of a photograph where people climb skeletons
of buildings. …
When I agreed to review this book, I expected to find the broad Yiddish humor of the Catskills or Second Avenue, but instead I found Jewish rituals, the Kaddish prayer (in Aramaic), the Yiddish culture of the shtetl and the work of master poets like Chaim Nachman Bialik. I found only one Yiddish word in the text. Maxwell Street is called a kesselgarden. More often Wendt uses Hebrew words instead of Yiddish. For example, she writes about the Golem, which in Hebrew means embryo or unfinished work and not the Yiddish word goylem (a lump of clay). Although laughter is mentioned two or three times in the book, other emotions prevail. Love of family, fear of loss, joy of celebration, such as lighting Havdalah candles to separate the holiness of the Sabbath from the “mundane” weekday world. There is empathy in “Sadelle Freeman, 1941.” In this persona poem, her grandmother expresses sadness about the Black women of Hot Springs Arkansas who couldn’t share the baths with me, couldn’t cool the blisters on their feet, their melodies strong and beautiful, healing more than water.
Finally, there is pride in the story of how her family name Pretcovitz became Freeman at Ellis Island. In “Interview with Papa: ‘Freeman,’” as the legend goes, her great grandfather yelled, “I am a free man.” (34) While I often find the use of archival photos too generic on Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s “Finding Your Roots,” in Wendt’s work, Iudovin’s photography is examined with the careful lens of the poet. As her poem, “Light and Dark,” suggests, chiaroscuro and antithesis are a central structural element of this saga of joy and sorrow. Wendt has connected past and present in a rich and imaginative collection of poems. “Above the Valley” is the last poem in the collection. In this poem, the poet keeps a vigil at her father’s deathbed. Here she reiterates the aesthetic and emotional goal of her work: the faithful rendering of her family’s history. Let’s give her the last word. There was once a wound bigger than the humid sky. And you were there, holding back the cracking clouds. I will keep you. Let me tell you a story.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Lois Baer Barr studied Yiddish with Dr. Khane-Faygl (Anita) Turtletaub of blessed memory. She was co-executive producer of the documentary Isa Kremer: The People’s Diva 2000. Her recent novel, The Tailor’s Daughter, recounts the coming of age of her mother, whose parents immigrated from Bialystok to Louisville in 1920. www.loisbaerbarr.com
Posted May 1, 2025
Next the poet invokes her great grandmother Sadelle Freeman in another persona poem set in Hot Springs, Arkansas in 1941. Her grandmother had gone to find a cure for her rheumatism. She found herself an outsider, she didn’t fit in with the white Christian society or the black society. The fourth poem is a persona poem in which Odessa-born artist Todros Geller speaks of his estrangement. “Goats Evade Demands and Chains” is an ekphrastic poem treating a woodcut from a 1930 book, Land to Land. A master of many forms, Wendt includes pantoums, ghazals, a triolet, a prose poem, and many ekphrastic poems. “Colossal Music,” for example, is based on a Chagall painting of a fiddler. She uses the ghazal in “Ner Tamid” (Everlasting Light) to weave work of the ghetto with the work of the woodcut artist Todros. In this poem poet and artist honor the skill of the shoemaker by casting his work as holy and eternal. Persona poems predominate. The Eisenhower Expressway speaks in two poems. It’s hard to pick a favorite in this fine collection, but I have read and reread “The Eisenhower Expressway Speaks, 1951.” While both poems deal with the destruction of neighborhoods and the upheaval created by the building of the expressway, there is also a touch of whimsy. The construction site becomes a playground for boys in “After summer storms/I turn into a brown river.” (48) But as always there is darkness which here becomes macabre. After the removal of a cemetery, another rain leaves bones for the boys to gather like dogs in a game of fetch. Wendt’s light touch allows us to read about miscarriages, ghosts, dead butterflies, a son born with low expectations for survival. Other poems deal with pogroms in Kishniev and Kuziai Forest Lithuania. These tragic events are redeemed by their beauty. The imagery is striking and original as she points out how history repeats itself. AFTER READING BIALIK’S “IN THE CITY OF SLAUGHTER” In Israel and Gaza, homes and houses of worship cave in like a woman huddled over her pregnant belly. Screams of sliced pain stretch the length of a photograph where people climb skeletons
of buildings. …
When I agreed to review this book, I expected to find the broad Yiddish humor of the Catskills or Second Avenue, but instead I found Jewish rituals, the Kaddish prayer (in Aramaic), the Yiddish culture of the shtetl and the work of master poets like Chaim Nachman Bialik. I found only one Yiddish word in the text. Maxwell Street is called a kesselgarden. More often Wendt uses Hebrew words instead of Yiddish. For example, she writes about the Golem, which in Hebrew means embryo or unfinished work and not the Yiddish word goylem (a lump of clay). Although laughter is mentioned two or three times in the book, other emotions prevail. Love of family, fear of loss, joy of celebration, such as lighting Havdalah candles to separate the holiness of the Sabbath from the “mundane” weekday world. There is empathy in “Sadelle Freeman, 1941.” In this persona poem, her grandmother expresses sadness about the Black women of Hot Springs Arkansas who couldn’t share the baths with me, couldn’t cool the blisters on their feet, their melodies strong and beautiful, healing more than water.
Finally, there is pride in the story of how her family name Pretcovitz became Freeman at Ellis Island. In “Interview with Papa: ‘Freeman,’” as the legend goes, her great grandfather yelled, “I am a free man.” (34) While I often find the use of archival photos too generic on Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s “Finding Your Roots,” in Wendt’s work, Iudovin’s photography is examined with the careful lens of the poet. As her poem, “Light and Dark,” suggests, chiaroscuro and antithesis are a central structural element of this saga of joy and sorrow. Wendt has connected past and present in a rich and imaginative collection of poems. “Above the Valley” is the last poem in the collection. In this poem, the poet keeps a vigil at her father’s deathbed. Here she reiterates the aesthetic and emotional goal of her work: the faithful rendering of her family’s history. Let’s give her the last word. There was once a wound bigger than the humid sky. And you were there, holding back the cracking clouds. I will keep you. Let me tell you a story.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Lois Baer Barr studied Yiddish with Dr. Khane-Faygl (Anita) Turtletaub of blessed memory. She was co-executive producer of the documentary Isa Kremer: The People’s Diva 2000. Her recent novel, The Tailor’s Daughter, recounts the coming of age of her mother, whose parents immigrated from Bialystok to Louisville in 1920. www.loisbaerbarr.com
Posted May 1, 2025
Thanks for Stopping By by Miriam Sagan
Blue Edge Books, 2024
85 pages
ISBN: 979-8-9854357-3-3
$16
Review by Marie Asner
Miriam Sagan has written over thirty books of poetry, memoir and fiction, including Anybody Home? and On the Mercy Me Planet. Her poetry was set to music for the Santa Fe Women’s Chorus, and incised on stoneware for haiku pathways, among other honors.
The poems in Thanks for Stopping By are not titled.
Thanks for Stopping By takes the reader through several avenues of Sagan’s life, and a short passage at the end of the book, explains what the thread is that holds the poems together. Miriam Sagan was diagnosed with a rare cancer and undergoing treatment which tells the reader, in non-medical terms, what to expect. The poems are fragments of thought. The person is on a table receiving treatment, as “the lettuce has finally bolted, gone to seed, it’s August, the lump in my left breast takes another diurnal turn around the sun.”
There are also poems about observations by the poet, love, for example, “we set out to dream the same dream,” or “peace that lasts as long as a screen door takes to slam.” When a husband dies, “…of how Bodhisattvas behave, memory, a watered-down kind of hope.”
There are three poems about a woman named Nadezdha who lives in a part of the world where there is war, and she is trying to survive. “Her name is Hope,” and she writes poetry with notebooks given to her, “Nadezdha hides the poems in the soup pot as the secret police bang on the door,” and “in the apartment blocks, the neighbors on each stairwell banded together.”
For the reader who is undergoing chemotherapy or knows of someone who is, the poems let you know what to expect on those long hours through treatment, drip by drip, sigh by sigh. Men are increasingly being included in having breast cancer, so the long hours can mean both male and female who see what the edge of pain is like. The poem about seeing a pregnant woman walking a dog is short, but makes a poignant point in “I also harbor something that is growing inside me that I can’t deliver.”
A nurse takes the writer’s coat and won’t give it back, “I’m sorry…. I haven’t had a vacation at all since last month.” My favorite is toward the end of the book about Marcus Aurelius and his comment, “what you cannot have, you cannot lose.” The poet is getting radiation treatment and “, a lymph node gone rogue……unable to keep the barbarians from my gate.”
Miriam Sagan poems show what it is like to undergo medical treatment and feel helpless. Strength comes from thinking of places that have been visited, people you have met and all to keep one from knowing that the treatment is either going to cure or fail. Such is life and this particular situation is brought to the forefront in the Miriam Sagan poems. Wisps of thought that go through the mind to endure and heal. "Life is not as easy as crossing a field, and crossing a field isn't that easy."
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Marie Asner balances a life of being a poet, freelance writer, book reviewer and entertainment reviewer. Marie is a member of the Missouri and Illinois State Poetry Societies, The Rockford Writers Guild and The Kansas Authors Club.
Posted May 1, 2025
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Marie Asner balances a life of being a poet, freelance writer, book reviewer and entertainment reviewer. Marie is a member of the Missouri and Illinois State Poetry Societies, The Rockford Writers Guild and The Kansas Authors Club.
Posted May 1, 2025
A Journeyman's Poems by jacob erin-cilberto
Praying Mantis Press, 2025
44 pages
ISBN: 9798309065400
Review by Patricia E. DeJong
As an avid fan, it is a joy to read another collection of poems from jacob erin-cilberto.
I am always astounded by what seems to be easily called upon metaphors, Senryu’s and Haiku’s when I know they are anything but. His writing is uniquely his own even the presentation of his work is unique with lower case letters as with his name which I view as simply humble. Why bother with capital letters and punctuation when the words speak for themselves and give the reader a range of which to conclude at the end. There is much to be gained by his work in wisdom, variety, and entertainment and one can only sigh with a bit of envy for his gift for writing poetry.
This collection is wonderfully introspective and suited to the times. You can see how his journey reflects his view of the world, people, relationships, politics, and nature. He writes short and powerful poems that always leave one contemplating the meaning in relation to one’s own life and views. I was particularly taken by his poem, “a guitar string found after the bombing”, (note the lower case even in the title). If I could write out the full poem for you I would because every line is amazingly good, and the message is profound. I can share with you these exceptional lines…
…teachers preach
but the genius
will teach
others to mimic
graphic equations
and pretend the sum of all the pretense
will shatter war and poverty
and suicide…
…who is as blind
as the teacher
and as genius
as the one who wrote songs
just before the music
heard itself silenced.
Another poem, “The Color of the Pages” stood out for me. First thing I noticed was the capital letters in the title and after reading the poem my conclusion was that it was done so out of respect. Of course this is just my choicy opinion, but it was a noticeable and notable observation to this reader and perhaps after reading the full poem yourself you might give some thought as to why the author did so when he is known for his lower-case lettering and absence of punctuation. Here are a few lines to help with that thought…
…We had to take Black American Writers as a course
and when I read these authors
I pondered why they weren’t just included with the White writers
all merited the same values we put to any classic author.
in the middle of the week, a White author would lecture us
on these Black writers as if he knew
what it was like to be them…
He goes on with his thought and disappointment and a conclusion with just a hint of anger over the education we receive, or the lack of, that can manipulate one’s view. I dare say, the world and the country being what it is right now, this poem really spoke to me.
Of course not all the poetry in his collection are so “heavy”, some are lighthearted as with Senryu #344 that speaks to those rare and exceptional friendships.
Boardwalk blues child
born of friends with benefits
she glistens pure gold
I know you will really enjoy this collection as much as I do. And I will end with a thank you to jacob erin-cilberto for his contribution to the art of poetry and to my collection.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Patricia E. DeJong is the Author of From this Side of the Picture Window and As the Ink Dries. She is a married, retired Registered Nurse from Machesney Park in Northern Illinois.
Posted May 1, 2025
Lovin Me Always by Crystal L. Goss
Page Publishing, 2023
60 pages
ISBN: 979-8-88960-880-6
$15.00
Review by Michael Escoubas
After fifty-five years of marriage, I have much to learn about the art of love. It is with grace and humility that Crystal L. Goss offers solid thinking about love. Her debut collection shares fresh insights that this reviewer appreciates. While I am reluctant, as a reviewer, to simply “sign-on” (no questions asked) with a writer’s point of view, Goss, writes from her heart with no pretense and no hidden social agenda.
Engaging Titles
I pre-read my review collections by perusing their titles. Goss is good with titles. When I read titles such as “All I Ask,” “Are You Too Busy,” “Do You Know How to Love,” “How Things Seem,” “Validation,” “What I Feel,” and “Why Change,” I recall, over the decades, these same questions/themes arising between Trudy and me. They are common to most couples and yet remain as fresh as if they have never been asked before.
Style
Goss writes in a very loose free verse style. I would name it prose poetry as distinguished from formal or classical verse. She writes as much as one speaking in normal conversation over coffee with a friend. She uses internal rhyme effectively and her work bears witness to music-like cadences that kept me focused on the page. Here is an excerpt from “The First Time”:
The First Time ever I saw your face, I knew I was in the right place. The first time, you held me close, you held me tight. I knew then everything would be alright, I could feel your heart beat, your soul seep, from your body to mine, even though it’s just between you and I, we are going to be just fine.
Note both internal rhyme and alliteration, “I could feel your / heart beat, your soul seep, from your body to mine, . . . we are going to be just fine.”
Highlights
Excerpt from “That First Kiss”:
That first kiss was like heaven to my lips, I knew you had me the moment you started, oh then how my lips parted, wanting more, and more of you, wanting to feel your whole body against mine, What the Hell, have I just lost my mind?
Even today, in our fifth decade of marriage, Trudy and I often recall that moment when both of our worlds changed forever.
As we drew ever closer to getting married, out thoughts coincided with this excerpt from “A Better Life”:
When you make her life better, She’ll feel like the sun and the moon cametogether and made love to each other
Your love and your desire to change things for her makes her want to loveyou forever. She’ll think about the pleasure of it all, just makes her want itall. She’ll take her share of you and do what It do, Love you!
While such idealism is worthy of applause, Goss also knows that, over time, two people in love grown ever-deeper, ever-more-mature in their respect for each other. This comes out in this excerpt from “A New Us”:
It’s now a New Year, a New You, a New Me, a New Us, and this is where I choose to be, loving you until my heart explodes and my mind goes numb, I just look at you and can feel the love, A Love that shows just how much you want and desire a New Us.
We steal away the moments to share, this is where we show how much we really care, this is where we put all the love that have to the test, we show as much as we can bear and we show all of our best, not to just each other do we love on, but one another we tell how want a New Us.
Lovin Me Always has much to commend it to contemporary literature on the subject. I have a feeling, unconfirmed, that Crystal Goss and her husband are well acquainted this famous Bible text on love:
When I was a child,I talked like a child,I thought like a child,I reasoned like a child.
When we grew up,We put the ways of childhood behind us.
And now these three remain:faith, hope and love.But the greatest of these is love.
First Corinthians 13.11 & 13
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted May 1, 2025
Engaging Titles
I pre-read my review collections by perusing their titles. Goss is good with titles. When I read titles such as “All I Ask,” “Are You Too Busy,” “Do You Know How to Love,” “How Things Seem,” “Validation,” “What I Feel,” and “Why Change,” I recall, over the decades, these same questions/themes arising between Trudy and me. They are common to most couples and yet remain as fresh as if they have never been asked before.
Style
Goss writes in a very loose free verse style. I would name it prose poetry as distinguished from formal or classical verse. She writes as much as one speaking in normal conversation over coffee with a friend. She uses internal rhyme effectively and her work bears witness to music-like cadences that kept me focused on the page. Here is an excerpt from “The First Time”:
The First Time ever I saw your face, I knew I was in the right place. The first time, you held me close, you held me tight. I knew then everything would be alright, I could feel your heart beat, your soul seep, from your body to mine, even though it’s just between you and I, we are going to be just fine.
Note both internal rhyme and alliteration, “I could feel your / heart beat, your soul seep, from your body to mine, . . . we are going to be just fine.”
Highlights
Excerpt from “That First Kiss”:
That first kiss was like heaven to my lips, I knew you had me the moment you started, oh then how my lips parted, wanting more, and more of you, wanting to feel your whole body against mine, What the Hell, have I just lost my mind?
Even today, in our fifth decade of marriage, Trudy and I often recall that moment when both of our worlds changed forever.
As we drew ever closer to getting married, out thoughts coincided with this excerpt from “A Better Life”:
When you make her life better, She’ll feel like the sun and the moon cametogether and made love to each other
Your love and your desire to change things for her makes her want to loveyou forever. She’ll think about the pleasure of it all, just makes her want itall. She’ll take her share of you and do what It do, Love you!
While such idealism is worthy of applause, Goss also knows that, over time, two people in love grown ever-deeper, ever-more-mature in their respect for each other. This comes out in this excerpt from “A New Us”:
It’s now a New Year, a New You, a New Me, a New Us, and this is where I choose to be, loving you until my heart explodes and my mind goes numb, I just look at you and can feel the love, A Love that shows just how much you want and desire a New Us.
We steal away the moments to share, this is where we show how much we really care, this is where we put all the love that have to the test, we show as much as we can bear and we show all of our best, not to just each other do we love on, but one another we tell how want a New Us.
Lovin Me Always has much to commend it to contemporary literature on the subject. I have a feeling, unconfirmed, that Crystal Goss and her husband are well acquainted this famous Bible text on love:
When I was a child,I talked like a child,I thought like a child,I reasoned like a child.
When we grew up,We put the ways of childhood behind us.
And now these three remain:faith, hope and love.But the greatest of these is love.
First Corinthians 13.11 & 13
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted May 1, 2025
The Last Wild Place by Peter Serchuk
WordTech Editions, 2025
80 pages
ISBN: 978-1-62549-473-3
$19.95
Review by Marie Asner
Peter Serchuk's poetry books include Waiting for Poppa at the Smithtown Diner (University of Illinois Press), All That Remains (Word Tech Editions) and The Purpose of Things (Regal House Publishing). Journals that have published Serchuk poems include “Poetry,” “American Poetry Review,” “Hudson Review,” “Atlanta Review” and “Valparaiso Poetry Review.”
The beautiful cover design on The Last Wild Place is by artist Pieter de Koninck. It is of a galloping horse, which is part of the western poems in this collection by Peter Serchuk. The poems are written from a free perspective and observation of minute details. It is toward the end of the poem collection that we read about a horse in “Horse,” with a comfortable home and “been loved from the moment his hooves hit ground.” However, at the end of the poem the writer wonders “…which of us is sleeping standing up, which heart truly dreams of a field without a fence.” “The Last Wild Place” has the writer hearing far off the sound of hooves of Appaloosa, Paint and Morgan.
Peter Serchuk’s poems are divided into sections, giving various views of places the author has traveled, including having complaining shirts in a closet. “The Saddest Polar Bear in China” in a Guangzhou mall could turn out to be a reincarnation of someone. Back to the United States with “The View from North Dakota” and “…it takes all summer to thaw us out.” Barcelona and “…suddenly out on your own limb,” with a warm climate not for everyone. On the home front, an adventure told by one’s father in “My Father Knew People” and “…with a handshake he could separate the thieves from the saints.” The intensity of death is shown in detail in “Murder at the Indianapolis Zoo” and then what happens. There is “At the Tule Elk Reserve” an encounter while hiking and the winner in this gazing match? “Chasing my Potential” and who will win this race? At a desert, the small species prevail and “the black widow combs her web while the elf owl sleeps with one eye open.” “Her” is a wonderful description of a female softball pitcher, who with her precise eyes, wins all the time. “Kicked her leg, cocked her arm all with a loving sigh …as I watched her final pitch sail by.” Teachers can come with any subject, and this one is about “Principles of Welding” with the grade being passing or not, and the teacher’s remark, “…keep the fire hot.” The poignant “Dead Bird on the Porch” and what to do next. Intensity of a fire storm burning homes is told in “Fire Chasers” and the reaction of spectators, “ashamed to be spellbound by the misery of others.” “Lucky” is my favorite in this Serchuk collection and the poignant “…which piece of the moon still shines on you, which angels haven’t jumped ship yet.” The last poems in this book are tongue-in-cheek about life. “End-of-Life Opportunities” are comments a pastor could make in preparation for a funeral. “The Cemetery Called Hollywood Forever” has sly wit as to what happens at the end of a rather poor acting career. Then, there is, toward the end of the poetry collection, “Joe’s Daughter” about a possible marriage to a wild Norwegian girl, "…sweet like cherry wine…” when the person writing is “…bitter grinds of yesterday’s coffee.” What could become of this duo? Peter Serchuk poems are a glance at life. Some a sideways glance, and others, a study in what is going on. No matter what part of the world, there is still a deep observation of life that brings the reader into the play of things. Like peering over one’s shoulder while the artist paints. Here, it is looking at words unfolding in front of you. From polar bears to wild horses to elks to owls, there are wild creatures here and humans to explore. A microcosm of words that circles the globe.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: ABOUT THE REVIEWER : Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 24-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted April 1, 2025 - Editor Note: Highland Park Poetry was deeply saddened to learn of Peter Serchuk's passing on April 11, 2025. Our hearts go out to his family and friends coping with this sudden loss.
Peter Serchuk’s poems are divided into sections, giving various views of places the author has traveled, including having complaining shirts in a closet. “The Saddest Polar Bear in China” in a Guangzhou mall could turn out to be a reincarnation of someone. Back to the United States with “The View from North Dakota” and “…it takes all summer to thaw us out.” Barcelona and “…suddenly out on your own limb,” with a warm climate not for everyone. On the home front, an adventure told by one’s father in “My Father Knew People” and “…with a handshake he could separate the thieves from the saints.” The intensity of death is shown in detail in “Murder at the Indianapolis Zoo” and then what happens. There is “At the Tule Elk Reserve” an encounter while hiking and the winner in this gazing match? “Chasing my Potential” and who will win this race? At a desert, the small species prevail and “the black widow combs her web while the elf owl sleeps with one eye open.” “Her” is a wonderful description of a female softball pitcher, who with her precise eyes, wins all the time. “Kicked her leg, cocked her arm all with a loving sigh …as I watched her final pitch sail by.” Teachers can come with any subject, and this one is about “Principles of Welding” with the grade being passing or not, and the teacher’s remark, “…keep the fire hot.” The poignant “Dead Bird on the Porch” and what to do next. Intensity of a fire storm burning homes is told in “Fire Chasers” and the reaction of spectators, “ashamed to be spellbound by the misery of others.” “Lucky” is my favorite in this Serchuk collection and the poignant “…which piece of the moon still shines on you, which angels haven’t jumped ship yet.” The last poems in this book are tongue-in-cheek about life. “End-of-Life Opportunities” are comments a pastor could make in preparation for a funeral. “The Cemetery Called Hollywood Forever” has sly wit as to what happens at the end of a rather poor acting career. Then, there is, toward the end of the poetry collection, “Joe’s Daughter” about a possible marriage to a wild Norwegian girl, "…sweet like cherry wine…” when the person writing is “…bitter grinds of yesterday’s coffee.” What could become of this duo? Peter Serchuk poems are a glance at life. Some a sideways glance, and others, a study in what is going on. No matter what part of the world, there is still a deep observation of life that brings the reader into the play of things. Like peering over one’s shoulder while the artist paints. Here, it is looking at words unfolding in front of you. From polar bears to wild horses to elks to owls, there are wild creatures here and humans to explore. A microcosm of words that circles the globe.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: ABOUT THE REVIEWER : Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 24-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted April 1, 2025 - Editor Note: Highland Park Poetry was deeply saddened to learn of Peter Serchuk's passing on April 11, 2025. Our hearts go out to his family and friends coping with this sudden loss.
An Altar of Tides by Peter Ludwin
73 Poems ~ 111 pages
Price: $20.00
Trail to Table Press, 2025
ISBN #: 979-8-218-44698-7
Review by Michael Escoubas
Upon my initial reading of Peter Ludwin’s An Altar of Tides, I opined that this is “just one more” book about the natural world. I’ve reviewed my share of them. As I donned my literary outdoor gear, laced up ankle high insulated footwear, I realized that I am nothing more than an amateur when it comes to substantive natural world poetry. Peter Ludwin is on a mission; Peter Ludwin has an agenda. This is a poet animated by love for his Pacific Northwest environs. He is concerned about its future. While Ludwin’s interests lay primarily with contemporary challenges to the environment, this skilled poet possesses an enviable range of subjects which bear the weight of truly perceptive poetics.
About the Title
In my youthful religious training, I learned that “altars” are sacred places. Deities have fellowship with the faithful at altars. Sacrifices, promises, and obeisance coalesce around them. “Tides” are natural phenomena which indicate the consistent rhythms of planet earth. Informed people, such as Peter Ludwin, make it their business to pay attention to the environment based on science, and may I say it . . . a sense of the sacred being insulted or at least compromised by the actions of people.
Arrangement & Design
The author has arranged his collection under five headings: The Fastening Wood (16), Wind in the Rigging (15), Mirage of the Snowshoe Hare (18), Hay on the Dream Floor (13), and Longing Buried in Stone (11). The headings are fascinating; they are poems in themselves. I invite readers to thoughtfully contemplate linkages between Ludwin’s divisions and the poems collected within each.
Themes Extrapolated
“A Reckoning” illustrates my premise that both the sacred and the secular animate Ludwin’s poetry. Also, its tensions. A Forest Service employee’s remark is the chosen epigram: God put those trees here for us to use! Of course He did, but at what cost? Within the space of eight tercets, Ludwin describes “a massive fir whose bark, / a text to rival Moses’ tablets, speaks its own moral law.” Somehow, this noble testimony to life, longevity, and wisdom has escaped the “saw’s unholy appetite.” Some compromise must be reached between balance sheets and the noble fir which has “taken this tree hundreds of years to tell its story.”
If birds could talk (some folks think they do) would they sound like the protagonists of “Medicine Crow”? “Mimicking men / on their porches, the birds argue among themselves. / It was better before they came, one says. // Then it was just the sun slanting through cedar. / That is the Indian crow. No, says another, / it’s much better now. Who leaves more garbage / for us to scavenge than these people?” The poem continues recalling a struggle between human and natural forces that has long existed but is now exacerbated.
“Testing Ground” is about a 14-year-old boy on a charter boat out to sea for salmon. Ludwin has a way of plumbing the emotional depths of his characters. In this instance the boy has mixed feelings . . .
I watched the captain bait my gear,
club a fish someone else had caught. It flopped
on the slippery deck, then lay still,
a thin red streak trickling from its mouth.
Riveted by the event, the blood that seconds
before had propelled it to the lure, I trod
the line that separates life from violent death,
grasped at some means to keep the fish.
However, the second an 18-pound coho strikes his lure, another type of struggle occurs within the young man’s psyche. Yes, through the exhilaration of the fight, he had what he wanted. But the last two lines have me scratching my head: “The fish, yes, and the dolphins off the bow. / And something more, something more.” What is that “something” more all about? The best poets give you something to think about. Peter Ludwin does exactly that.
An Altar of Tides is a collection of wide-ranging subject-matter. It is historically accurate and informative. Ludwin is an expert in detail, a skilled poetic craftsman who is energized by the good he can accomplish through the instrument of poetry. Having met Peter Ludwin through his work, I will never again think in cavalier terms about our magnificent environment.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER : Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted April 1, 2025
Faith Lost and Found by Jim Hanson
145 pages
Price: $15.00
Cyberwit.net
ISBN: 978-9363547681
Review by jacob erin-cilberto
Jim Hanson writes of Faith Lost and Found. Sometimes we cannot corral faith. We may lose it before we are sure what it is. As Robert Creeley penned, “Position is where you put it.” Jim writes in his poem “Places”:
“in places of blunt destiny
lived out to be conforming fate
when a born baby cried too late”
Fate often comes too late and sometimes faith comes too late as well. We may be born into it but not understand exactly what it is or why we have it until much later in life. Faith can be like the prodigal child. In “Train Never Came,” he writes:
“Each morning at the station
he sat silent on a bench
looking down tracks more narrow
down tracks on worn wooden ties”
I feel here that Hanson may be talking about looking for a faith that has worn down and now he is “looking down the line of light/ showing land of promise/ forgetting tracks and stations/ were abandoned years ago.” As a reader who was raised Catholic, I get this. Somehow that train of faith wore down those tracks for me and left me at the station in a confused state with no ticket.
In “Santayana’s Realms” he discloses how:
---the atheist died
after ten years in his bedroom
at a Rome convent where
nuns wept and prayed for his soul.”
My nuns also wept and prayed for my penmanship to improve. We believe or we don’t. No one else’s prayers can get us to the finish line. We must run our own race at our own pace when it comes to faith. I once had an overnight discussion with an atheist. It turned out a draw. I could not sway him and he could not sway me. Jim, in another poem addresses the idea of faith in this way:
“Whether to be or not to be
In a world of no clear meaning.”
I am 75 years old and still am unsure about faith. But Jim Hanson’s Faith Lost And Found shows me I am not alone and this book gave me much to ponder, much with which to identify and as he relates in “Star Walk”:
“I asked,
from where he comes
to where he goes.
He replied,
From star stuff he comes
and dark matter he goes.”
“I asked,
if he were a god or avatar
He replied,
A soul with common sense
Of cosmic providence---”
So the question remains as to why we have faith, why we lose it and why we may find it again. Does common sense tell us there is a God or does it tell us there is not?
This poetic journey with Jim Hanson surely shed some light on that question.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: jacob erin-cilberto is author of 18 books of poetry, his most recent being Fishing for Intellectual Meteors. He teaches at John Logan College and conducts workshops at Heartland Writers Guild, Southern Illinois Writers Guild and Union County Writers Guild.
Posted April 1, 2025
Train of Thought by Scott Waters
50 pages
Price: $17.00
Kelsay Books, 2025
ISBN: 978-1639807017
Review by Michael Minassian
Scott Waters new collection of poems Train of Thought is a meditative ride through the passing landscape, everyday places, and the people that inhabit them. Scott uses the metaphor of a journey to call attention to the world and our place within it. Full of keen observations, humor, and compassion, these are poems to savor again and again.
His attention to the small details also makes this such a pleasurable trip. That and his empathy for the wounded souls around us, whether it is a child, a grey bearded man staggering through a train, or a mother with varicose veins hanging laundry. All are treated with respect and affection.
With an occasional stop along the way, the poems take you on a train ride of wonder and discovery. At the outset we are carried along to observe and share in the poet’s discerning eye. “When I Took This Job” - the first poem in the collection - grabbed my attention and pulled me in to share in the journey:
“I didn’t bank on green dragon hills
sliding on their bellies
toward the Central Valley
breathing poppy flames in spring”
Scott is able to turn the smallest moments into a crescendo of epiphanies. The images pile up: “streaks of rain”, “hills stand like horses”, “a grey beard/blown like kindling,’ – cinematic in their vividness. Startling metaphors strung together like train tracks and the occasional use of rhyme, artfully placed and spare, heighten the impact.
The poems show us an individual in awe of his own place in the world, conscious of the vastness of the universe. In the poem “Small,” we stand alongside the speaker as he gazes in the mirror. What he sees in his reflection may not be the same picture he has in his head, but it is an honest appraisal, a part of the natural world, good or bad, sublime or ordinary. No matter, a glance out the window, a bird in flight, an overhead conversation on the train:
“It won’t take much by then –
a spray of white petals
against your windshield
the chatter on the crowded train –
to teach you
just how small
you really are.”
Scott often points out these details, no matter how insignificant they may seem, reminding us to pay attention as in “About the Floor.” After describing the beauty and grandeur of the outside scenery “butterscotch glow” and “beams as thick as battering rams” the poem concludes with a focus not the passing beauty but on “The filthy/train/floor.”
In the poem “Mumbly Old Men” he tells a story with sly humor,
“You kids may not believe it
but there was a time when people held
the New York Times in ink-stained hands.”
reminding us that the actual world resides not the digital universe, but in the physical realm we can touch, feel, sense, hear and smell. Scott ends the poem by turning it back on his own generation:
“the way we laughed at our own
fathers and grandfathers.”
The last poem in the collection “I took a train to Fresno” gives us cinematic images of the beauty of the passing scenery: windmills and orchards, mountains and marshes,
“criss-crossed white swords
of irrigation spray doing wet battle
scattered droplets winking like diamonds
on the hilt of noon…
contrasted with other scenes of malls and rusty trucks.
“the distracted sky still gazed on
and so did I”
The speaker can’t look away, wanting to take it all in, as I did as I read the poems in this fine collection. Join the train ride. You’ll be glad you did.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Minassian is a Contributing Editor for Verse-Virtual, an online poetry journal. His poetry collections Time is Not a River, Morning Calm, and A Matter of Timing as well as a chapbook, Jack Pays a Visit, are all available on Amazon. For more information: https://michaelminassian.com
Posted April 1, 2025
Archive of Book Reviews published by Highland Park Poetry
January - March 2025
- How to Do the Greased Wombat Slide by Pamela Miller (March 2025, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- Inside My Father's House by Josephine LoRe (March 2025, Review by Patricia Carragon)
- Random Reflections by Brian Pondenis (March 2025, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- Persons of Interest: Poetry & Prose by Mark Fleisher (March 2025, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- A Work Life by Marilyn Gehant (February2025, Review by Bill Cushing)
- Paradise Lost: A Poetic Journey by Paul Buchheit (February 2025, Review by Judith MK Kaufman)
- this deep, wide, dark world by Whitnee Coy (February 2025, Review by Marie Asner)
- Ballad of Life: and other poems by Ian Smiddy (February 2025, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- Appear to Dance by Linda Kleinbub (January 2025, Review by Jamie Wendt)
- Parental Forest by Chad Norman (January 2025, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- Distilled Lives, Volume 7: The Biennial Anthology of the Illinois State Poetry Society Edited by Lennart Lundh & Marjorie Rissman (January 2025, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- Noon Out of Nowhere: Complete Poems and Aphorisms by Alan Harris (January 2025, Review by Michael Escoubas)
Archive of Book Reviews published by Highland Park Poetry
October - December 2024
- Come December: A Collection of Poems by Colleen McManus Hein (December 2024, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- The Old FOlks Call It God's Country: Poems of the Tarheel and Palmetto States by Carol Parris Krauss (December2024, Review by Marie Asner)
- Flyover Country by B.J. Buckley (December 2024, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- From This Side of the Picture Window by Patricia E. DeJong (December 2024, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- What It Was by Tina Cole (November 2024, Review by Candace Armstrong)
- Go Figure by Carol Moldaw (November 2024, Review by Marie Asner)
- Haiku and Senryu You: a book of short shorts by jacob erin-cilberto (November 2024, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- Dragons and Rayguns by Vince Gotera (November 2024, Review by Bruce W. Niedt)
- Ode to the States: Poems Inspired by the Fifty States and the District of Columbia by Diane L. Redleaf (October 2024, Review by Gary David)
- Esemplastic: Many and One by Karian Markos (October 2024, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- It's This by Laura Foley (October 2024, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- The Unraveling Script by Maggie Kennedy (October 2024, Review by Candace Armstrong)
Archive of Book Reviews published by Highland Park Poetry
July - September 2024
- Pink Moon by Tina Barr (July 2024, Review by Michael Escoubas
- The Seven Streams: An Irish Cycle by David Whyte (July 2024, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- Echoes in My Eyes by Kelly Sargent (July 2024, Review by Whitnee Coy)
- The Unknown Daughter by Tricia Knoll (July 2024, Review by Joan Leotta)
- A Sphere Encased in Fires and Life by Jared Smith (July 2024, Review by Ed Werstein)
- Kansas Reimagined: Poems by Anara Guard (July 2024, Review by Ann Malaspina)
- A Time for Such a Word by Michael W. Thomas (August 2024, Review by Marie Asner)
- Prairie Roots by James Lowell Hall (August 2024, Review by Kathryn P. Haydon)
- Dark Souvenirs by John Amen (August 2024, Review by Bill Cushing)
- Family Rattling by William T. Carey (August 2024, Review by Carol L. Gloor)
- Poems from a Restless Traveler by Terry Loncaric (September 2024, Review by Maggie Kennedy)
- At Last a Valley by Lara Dolphin (September 2024, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- Singing is Praying Twice by Marianne Peel (September 2024, Review by Cynthia T. Hahn)
- Abundance/Diminishment: Poems by Ann E. Michael (September 2024, Review by Michael Escoubas)
Archive of Book Reviews published by Highland Park Poetry
April - June 2024
- The Feather Variations by Jane Richards (June 2024, Review by Marie Asner
- How I Went Into the Woods by Lennart Lundh (June 2024, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- Losing Streak by Paul J. Willis (June 2024, Review by Gary Davis)
- The Shape of Wind on Water: New and Selected Poems by Ann Fox Chandonnet (June 2024, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- Wild Apples by Tricia Knoll (May 2024, Review by Marie Asner)
- Aligned with the Sky by Kathy Lohrum Cotton (May 2024, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- What Shines by Sydney Lea (May 2024, Review by Tricia Knoll)
- Making Invisible Visible Again by Marie Bellefeuille (May 2024, Review by Carol L. Gloor)
- Silent Marshes by Tom Moran (April 2024, Review by Gary Davis)
- Democracy - Ever Fragile by Terry Loncaric (April 2024, Review by Julie Isaacson)
- Hunting for Shark's Teeth - Poems by Renee Butner (April 2024, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- The Storm by Mark Lipman (April 2024, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- A Whispering by Geoffrey Heptonstall (Jan. 2024, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- Rejection to Acceptance: 57 Poems That Finally Made It by Patricia Williams (Jan. 2024, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- Sonnets of Love & Joy: poems by Paul Buchheit (Jan. 2024, Review by Judy Cummings)
- Born Under the Influence by Andrena Zawinski (Jan. 2024, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- Quarantine Highway by Millicent Borges Accardi (Jan. 2024, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- Departures from Rilke by Steven Cramer (Jan. 2024, Review by Dan Carey)
- A Tale of Two Souls by Shai Har-El (Feb. 2024, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- All the Poems I Never Wrote by jacob erin-cilberto (Feb. 2024, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- Late Epistle by Anne Myles (Feb. 2024, Review by Gary Davis)
- How to Become Invisible by Mary McCarthy (Feb. 2024, Review by Joan Leotta)
- Double Stream by Ellen Dooling Reynard (Mar. 2024, Review by Michael Escoubas)
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- Aisle 228 by Sandra Marchetti (December 2023, Review by Marie Asner)
- Castaway by Miriam Sagan (December 2023, Review by Tricia Knoll)
- Lamenting My Failure to Learn How to Tap Dance and Other Missteps by Joan Wiese Johannes (December 2023, Review by Lois Baer Barr)
- Periodic Boyfriends by Drew Pisarra (December 2023, Review by Lynn Viti)
- Family Matters: Poems for and about Grandparents and Grandchildren by Judie Rae (December 2023, Review by Michael Escoubas)
- Our Aching Bones, Our Breaking Hearts: Poems on Aging by Joel Savishinsky (December 2023, Review by Michael Escoubas)
