At once troubling and lovely, infuriating and breathtaking, Claire Fuller’s SWIMMING LESSONS is a triumph in literary fiction—and one that demands you have your next read ready if you want any chance to cope.… Read More We’ll Never Know What We’re Leaving Behind: Reading SWIMMING LESSONS by Claire Fuller
Happy News! I’m pleased to announce my poetry review of Angela Voras-Hills’ LOUDER BIRDS from Pleiades Press, 2020, is now live at Green Mountains Review!… Read More My Review of Angela Voras-Hills’ LOUDER BIRDS is Now Live at Green Mountains Review!
A fun announcement for today, friends! I’ll be one of three of 2019’s INSPY Speculative Fiction judges! … Read More Yours Truly is Going To Be a Judge!
My interview with Shaindel Beers, hosted by The Rumpus, is here! It features thoughts on Shaindel’s writing process, SECURE YOUR OWN MASK, nature and violence, and our mutual experiences of the Midwest and motherhood. Enjoy!… Read More An Interview with Shaindel Beers!
Here is my complete book review of Shaindel Beers’ SECURE YOUR OWN MASK, from White Pine Press (2018). Enjoy!… Read More The (Im)Precision of Language, Nature, & Violence: Reading Shaindel Beers’ Secure Your Own Mask
Here is a link to my review of K. Arsenault Rivera’s THE PHOENIX EMPRESS, available now over at BookPage.… Read More Book Review Up at BookPage!
The thing that I love about erasure poetry is how interactive it can (and should!) be with the original work it is pulling from. I think, for some writers who attempt this form, the goal is to reinvent the words that are on the page, than to accept them and attempt to draw something… Read More “My Face Resembles / The One Reflected in the Water”: Reading David Dodd Lee’s And Others, Vaguer Presences
David Dodd Lee has been there with me since the beginning—not since the beginning of my reading and loving poetry, but of my writing poetry and taking that progress seriously. Of taking poetry seriously, and the idea that there was something to be taken from poetry, to be understood, to be had. Like a… Read More “Black Light / Her Name in a Cup”: Scenes & Impressions: Reading David Dodd Lee’s Animalities
When I think of highways, I think of other cars, the open road, corn fields. I think of how limitless, how borderless these highways can be, allowing us to go straight, turn left, or turn right, as we please. But there are also barricades: toll roads, No U-Turn signs, and Detour Turn Left/Right; these… Read More Her Heart of Hearts & The Art of Discovery: Reading Jackie Haze’s Borderless
I don’t know about you, but in my mind, perception and grief are united. This is not to say that one cannot exist without the other, but only that our perceptions vary based on our state of mind—especially when we are talking about grief. On an average, typical day, we know very well that… Read More ‘This is Not a Pipe’: The Powers of Nature & Grief over Perception & Definition: Reading Ross Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude
Sometimes I find myself thinking so much about what poetry is or what it can do that I forget to think about how it can make me feel. Perhaps that is the sign of a lesser poetry, a poetry with holes in it: one that goes through the motions, the mechanics, of writing, but… Read More Dialogue of the Body, Dialogue of a Storm: Reading Sandra Marchetti’s Confluence
Let me begin by playing a round of Two Truths and a Lie… We all know how this works, right? The speaker shares two truths about themselves, and a lie, but the lie must not be easily distinguished from the two truths, and the other players are supposed to guess which statement is a… Read More “Look Where That Has Gotten Me”: The Potential Self-Awareness & Honesty of Poetry: Reading Tracey Knapp’s Mouth
