Review #34: ‘The Talking Day’ by Michael Klein

Michael Klein is equal parts flaneur and raconteur, his “verses” lyrically and loquaciously ambling along as he “traverses”…

Review #33: ‘Ask Me’ by William Stafford

Culled from the 20,000 poems that he wrote during his lifetime of which 4000 were published, this book collects his Greatest Hits.

‘Biting the Apple’ by Jeanie Greensfelder

He ghosts about the house,

reminding me to take out the trash,

to push the can for pickup,

to find the paper in the bushes,

and to start coffee.

He’d do it, but he’s gone on retreat.
We each practice losing the other.

Review #32: ‘The Black Dot’ by Kristin Prevallet

Favorites: Repeated readings of this text at random will open up new spaces inside your head.

Review #31: ‘Slow Motion German Adjectives’ by Donald Dunbar

For starters, this collection takes on Mary Oliver, Ronald Reagan, Peggy Noonan, Thom Yorke, Suicide Bombers and iPhone…

Review #30: ‘Ameriscopia’ by Edwin Torres

This dystopic collection examines what it means to give voice to America via a Puerto Rican vantage point, utilizing new forms and intense repetitions to dizzying effect from chanting and ranting to narratives broken into fractured paratactic lyrics.

Review #29: ‘Theophobia’ by Bruce Beasley

Disclosures: For over 25 years, Beasley’s antinomian sermons have renewed my faith in the Art.

Review #28: ‘Church of Needles’ by Sarah Sousa

Perhaps the secret to adult prayer has been this: the more concrete its particulars, the greater possibility of its actually being heard.

Review #27: ‘Photographs Taken at One-Hour Intervals During a Walk from Galveston Island to the West Texas Town of Marfa’ by Joshua Edwards

…this peripatetic project that traverses almost 700 miles, a photograph taken every hour while on the road to document a walking tour reminiscent of the ones the Romantic Poets once took through the Lake District.

Review #26: ‘Sun Bear’ by Matthew Zapruder

Literary history will be merciless when it comes to our posthumous standing, most all of us surely to be erased, consigned to a dusty footnote in contemporary culture’s vast forgotten tomes, if that.