Poetry

Book Review: “On Frost and Eliot” — No Contest

April 10, 2025
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The value of “On Frost and Eliot” is sending the reader spinning out of its own text and back to poems by two of the major poets of the 20th century, each of whom has suffered from the vagaries of fashion, both in popularity and neglect.

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Poetry Review: Ron Padgett’s “Pink Dust” — The Joyful Weight of Words

March 12, 2025
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Ron Padgett’s “Pink Dust” proves that W.H. Auden was wrong — the nothing of poetry contains everything required to make a good (even heroic) life happen.

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Poetry Review: Songs from a Bone Window — Elizabeth T. Gray Jr.’s “After the Operation”

March 3, 2025
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For poet Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr., the neurological is also archeological.

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Poetry Review: “Foxglovewise” — Contending With Presence and Absence

January 31, 2025
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The healing powers of poetry is a sieve through which Ange Mlinko pours bitterness and disunity, cosmic and personal.

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Poetry Review: “What Comes from the Night” — Witnessing Tiny Secret Lives

December 10, 2024
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“What Comes from the Night’ testifies to John Taylor’s complex bond with nature, a generous alliance that includes moments of introspection and melancholy.

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Poetry Review: “Falsework” — Poems That Leave Room for the Reader’s Echo

October 6, 2024
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Time and again, Alice Fogel’s poems’ subtractions have a purifying effect, showing us a landscape or an architecture we hadn’t guessed was there.

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Book Review: The Music Is You — August Kleinzahler’s “A History of Western Music”

September 24, 2024
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August Kleinzahler’s “A History of Western Music” will be a special treat for poetry readers who also appreciate music in all its forms and genres.

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Poetry Review: “The Collected Poems of Delmore Schwartz” — A Necessary and Welcome Gift

April 2, 2024
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Let’s hope that this book will provide an overdue and well deserved third act for the poetry of one of the twentieth century’s poetic masters.

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Book Review: The Poetic Vision of Larry Eigner — A Gravitational Aesthetic Force Field

February 7, 2024
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Jennifer Bartlett’s fine biography is a capstone to a steady solidification of respect for this innovative poet’s art and legacy.

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Poetry Review: Ishion Hutchinson’s “School of Instructions” — Lured Through History

November 23, 2023
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Jamaican poet Ishion Hutchinson’s New-World, nonwhite perspective claims its own stake in a history that we have come too much to associate with its imperialist heavyweights.

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