Kentucky Review by H. L. Hix Immigration is a pressing public policy issue. Millions worldwide are fleeing conditions of grave danger or extreme hardship in one country for conditions they…
Category: Poetry
A Scrap in the Blessings Jar: New and Selected Poems by David Bottoms
LSU Review by David Starkey Now that I’ve read A Scrap in the Blessings Jar, I’m not sure how the late David Bottoms flew under my radar for so long.…
Nothing Stays Put: The Life and Poetry of Amy Clampitt by Willard Spiegelman | Jane Kenyon: The Making of a Poet by Dana Greene
Knopf | Illinois Review by David Starkey Some striking similarities emerge between the subjects of Willard Spiegelman’s Nothing Stays Put: The Life and Poetry of Amy Clampitt and Dana Greene’s…
Creature by Marsha de la O
Pittsburgh Review by George Yatchisin Ventura, California-based poet Marsha de la O knows of fire, force of destruction and engine of rebirth. Consider the poem “The Afterlife of Flames,” from…
Restless for Words by DeWitt Henry
Finishing Line Review by Jack Smith Founder of one of the most prestigious literary magazines in the country, Ploughshares, DeWitt Henry is also a prize-winning novelist, memoirist, essayist, and poet. …
California Review of Books – 10 Best Books of 2023
The following list was decided after much consultation between California Review of Books co-editors David Starkey and Brian Tanguay and the journals’ most frequent reviewers, Walter Cummins and George Yatchisin.…
General Release from the Beginning of the World by Donna Spruijt-Metz
Parlor Review by Catherine Abbey Hodges I can’t remember when I last read a book of poems that I’d call suspenseful. Donna Spruijt-Metz’s new poetry collection, General Release from the…
Democracy of Fire by Susan Cohen
Broadstone Review by Catherine Abbey Hodges In 2021, Susan Cohen’s poem “In Respect to the Jellyfish” won the Red Wheelbarrow Prize. The poem crossed my radar at that time, and…