The Redesignation of Paradise by Denise Newman | Alibi Lullaby by Norma Cole

Kelsey Street | Omnidawn Review by Laura Mullen Two books by powerhouse Bay Area writers are reason to celebrate—offering welcome sites of refuge and refreshment. Poets Denise Newman and Norma…

Standard Time by Dante Di Stefano

Cow Creek Review by H. L. Hix By the wholeness it tenders in so slender a volume (38 pages of poetry plus front and back matter), Dante Di Stefano’s Standard…

Alba and Other Songs: Poems by Fred Arroyo

Gunpowder Review by Laura Villareal In Novelist as Vocation, Haruki Murakami quipped, “The way I see it, people with brilliant minds are not particularly well suited to writing novels.” Not…

Rome: Pedestrians Beware by Rafael Alberti (trans. and with essays by Anthony L. Geist & Giuseppe Leporace)

Swan Isle Review by David Starkey As someone who has spent a fair bit of time in the Eternal City, I can say that in order to truly love Rome,…

Mojave Ghost by Forrest Gander

New Directions Review by Laura Mullen If “The personal is the political” was a truism and rallying cry of second wave feminism (invoked also by student and civil rights activists),…

The Prelude by William Wordsworth

Brandeis Review by David Starkey The subtitle to this edition of William Wordsworth’s The Prelude provides a hint of just how jam-packed the book is with ancillary material. “Newly Edited…

The Blue-Cliff Record by David Hinton

Shambhala Review by David Starkey Those of us who are not practicing Buddhists, but are still “Zen-curious,” can turn for modest enlightenment to classics like Alan Watts’ The Way of…

the atmosphere is not a perfume it is odorless by Matthew Cooperman

Parlor Review by H. L. Hix The title of Matthew Cooperman’s new poetry collection, the atmosphere is not a perfume it is odorless, indicates by its very structure one strong…

31 Outstanding Poetry Books from 2024 – Alcalá to Zarin

Reviews by David Starkey Every year since 2014, I’ve set aside a couple of months to sit down with what amounts to a long shelf of of poetry published in…

A Walk with Frank O’Hara by Susan Aizenberg

New Mexico Review by H. L. Hix Frank O’Hara himself is not a recurring presence in Susan Aizenberg’s new volume, but the themes introduced in the title poem, which opens…