As I was reading Roger Rosenblatt’s Kayak Morning, I found myself mentally clawing at the reflective prose for a direction. I was hoping to find a structure that lead both this book’s speaker and its subject to some unified conclusion. I was looking for distance, for the book to travel. I think, because of how much of this piece…
Read MoreIt’s like an intricately-versed, extra-high-definition nature special. Although its imagery is vivid, determining meanings in Jen Hadfield’s poetry collection, Byssus, can be as murky and sticky as trudging through a bog of mollusks. You may often struggle to peel the parasitic, wonky dialect and labyrinthine imagery away from the core…
Read MoreNever before has an elegy made me feel so giddy inside. Bob Hicok’s Elegy Owed provokes the reader to completely rethink the concept of the elegy, warp it from a leaden dirge into a necessary foil of wit and celebration. No abysmal doldrums weigh this collection down. With childlike playfulness, the shamanistic Hicok yanks the sky down…
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