Divya Victor’s poetry collection Curb digs into the layers of community in United States suburbia, with a direct intensity that documents pervasive assaults against immigrants who settle here. She opens with a personal admission of her own mother being afraid all the time, of all places being the same in their lack of safety. We […]
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One complaint I’ll often hear after recommending books to friends is that the work is too sad. “It’s too depressing,” they’ll say, not only about fiction that heaps ever escalating acts of tragedy upon the reader (as in Yanagihara’s A Little Life) but also nonfiction, especially those of political or sociological focus. It is a […]
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Carlina Duan is incredible at something that I find very difficult: building enormity and emotional honesty from a seemingly average moment. There are many places our work can come from—trauma, love, etc—so often, I consider a poem an event. When I read poets like Mary Oliver or Aracelis Girmay, I see that we can make […]
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Danielle Rose’s poetry collection at first & then is a short and sweet exploration of both physical and emotional shift. In only thirty pages, we gain a world’s worth of insight into a beautiful transition from darkness to striking light. The first poem opens with a suicide, the stillness of a fallen woman’s landing and […]
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Ghost Tracks, the second chapbook from Sneha Subramanian Kanta, was published in December of 2020 from Louisiana Literature Press. In an interview with The Shore, the poet cites her fascination with Kingdom Animalia—“Cognitive biology taught in school often disregards the fact that ‘human beings’ belong to the Kingdom of Animalia,” and so her collection seeks […]
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Even from its opening sentence, Elle Nash’s new story collection, Nudes, shapes the reader’s expectations. “It began when she moved in below their apartment,” Nash writes, “or maybe it began a week after when the boyfriend came downstairs to ask for a cup of sugar for a cake, or maybe it began a week after […]
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A dance and meditation in book form, No Knowledge is Complete Until It Passes Through My Body by Asiya Wadud shines light on the shadows between harsh borders. She navigates not only the rush of the physical world, but also the more subtle flow of time and memory. Her collection is wistfully historical, rife with […]
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The penultimate poem in Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party, winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize via The American Poetry Review, is a short piece that ends with a brusque suggestion: “You could write things down just as they are, / just as you see them. You could try that.” Were it that easy! […]
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Jackie Wang’s poetry debut, The Sunflower Cast A Spell To Save Us From The Void, delivers a fascinating mix of fantasy and reality to start off the new year. Many of these poems have a startling beginning – frequently we enter in the moment of a catastrophe, whether it is a natural disaster, attempted murder, […]
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Our lives are shaped by countless obstacles to our desires. Many of these potential obstacles – race, gender, class, and the culture in which we reside, for example – exist largely outside our control. Awareness of this truth rarely deters our striving, however. We continue to climb, to throw ourselves against these limitations. Where our […]
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Tanya Holtland’s debut poetry collection, Requisite, opens with a preface that softly urges the importance of spiritual ecology, which seizes my attention immediately. She advocates for the harmony and healing of nature, and caring for the earth as an extension of ourselves. She stages a lyrical political battleground of environmental crisis and the draining of […]
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Cut Woman, from small-press Game Over Books in Boston, is Dena Igusti’s debut collection. Their work is at its best in its play with space. Engaging with the trauma of female genital mutilation, the loss of her people, desire, and patriarchy, Igusti’s poems are varied in form but often united in their modes of fragmentation—apt, […]
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Etel Adnan dispenses down-to-earth wisdom in her poetic work Shifting the Silence, bringing readers along as she recounts her global travels and lessons learned. We are lucky to glimpse her 95 years of life condensed into these pages, and thumb through her thoughts on the passage of life. Hailed as a meditation or rumination on […]
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Your body is a temple; so sayeth the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians. In Boston-poet Levi Cain’s first chapbook Dogteeth, now on its second printing via Ursus Americanus Press, the body is more prismatic: it’s “a house / with newly washed floors,” “a pool to drink from,” or “an apartment / condemned by god.” This […]
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Aditi Machado’s collection Emporium is very timely in its mix of isolation and worldly discovery. As we turn these pages, we follow a merchant who seems at once lost and found on her journey, selling, buying, and trading, and in the end we may be unsure how much has been given up, gained, and what […]
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In times like these, coping with stress and change and seemingly unavoidable hopelessness, David Hanlon’s Spectrum of Flight is a testament to perserverance. His poems outline his strength and growth as he walks us back through his own life, showcasing many moments when he was knocked down and stood up again, a little taller each […]
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Aly Pierce’s poetry collection, The Visible Planets, is a work of universal appeal (bad pun absolutely intended). Most people can probably relate to speculation about our place in the world and the cryptic bigger picture outside of our Earth. While many poets focus on the grounding images of humanity in relation to nature, full of […]
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Toxicon and Arachne, the recent poetry collection by Joyelle McSweeney, depicts the short human lifespan with an unconventional consistent darkness. Uniquely refreshing in its morbidity, this work is scattered with the bitterness of losing a child, and McSweeney portrays her grief “the way a crane / dances for its mate / the awkward body / […]
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The third collection from Leslie Contreras Schwartz, Who Speaks for Us Here, is both a question and answer for silenced women. These poems are both a warning and a guide about how to hush the haunting of trauma, how to master the art of carrying multiple selves inside of us. The women in these lyrical […]
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Mónica de la Torre’s marvelous work of art and language, Repetition Nineteen, weaves its way into the world this month to make our lives a little brighter. A vivid and thoughtful bilingual book, this work inspires readers to consider the misunderstandings and reliability of translating and code-switching, and gives us permission to fill in the […]
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Meena Alexander has a conversation with literary ghosts in her posthumous poetry collection, In Praise of Fragments. The writings and drawings in this book depict nonlinear, speculative bits about what it means to be alive, present, and home. She invites us on her exploration of the soul in her last few years of life. Many […]
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Speech, a reflective and well-timed new work by Jill Magi, is quite possibly the delicate walkthrough of life that so many of us secretly wish we had. The speaker serves as a flawlessly observant guide on a linguistic journey, giving us both foresight and hindsight as we wander along a path that is at once […]
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Slingshot by Cyrée Jarelle Johnson is a turbulent debut collection that should be on every fall reading list. His poems demonstrate skillful navigation of what it is like to see the world through queer black eyes, opening all other eyes to the alternate visibility and invisibility of this existence, the dangers of being seen by […]
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Hannah Cohen’s poetry collection Bad Anatomy shows us how our world looks when we hold it in vine-wrapped hands, at once a fragile ball and a strong snare. Read this book to be inspired to look at the world through new eyes, with a fresh stop-to-smell-the-roses vision. Cohen’s very first poem is about everything she […]
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Marlena Chertock stunned us once before with her poems in “On that one-way trip to Mars,” and now she returns with another astronomical collection, “crumb-sized.” Familiar topics return with new flair and detail, teaching us more about blackbodies and exoplanets, and imparting more awareness on personal issues like dysplasia and queer life. One of her […]
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You may stumble upon Alain Ginsberg if you’re trying to find Allen Ginsberg, but there’s no need to be disappointed by this poet mix-up. Alain’s writing is a melancholy autobiography of what it means to not only survive, but also to live, and how hard it can be for queer individuals to do the bare […]
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There’s nothing like finding a book that is so open and honest, you feel as if you’ve found a window into the author’s psyche. That’s how it feels to read Marianne Apostolide’s latest, Deep Salt Water (BookThug), a powerful memoir about abortion and the experience of loss as it evolves over time. It’s a beautifully […]
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JR Mahung’s literary creation, “Like Waters,” is both a tidal force and a gentle flow. It is teaching someone how to dance and not caring if they step on your feet, just wanting to twirl in some comfortable space with them. It is a lesson that if you keep searching for perfection, you’ll miss all […]
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I remember being mesmerized the first time I saw Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged session, as I’m sure countless other teens have. From the first notes of “About A Girl,” I was hooked, feet up on the couch, listening and wondering about the mystical blue-eyed man growling into the microphone in that famous oatmeal cardigan. It’s a […]
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Taylor Steele is a rare triple-Taurus. She’s a triple threat too—poet, screenwriter, and essayist—and it seems there’s very little that isn’t in her wheelhouse. You’ll find this is true almost instantly upon cracking Dirty. Mouth. Kiss. open. This is a collection of poems that roots for protection of the self, that’s wrought with newfound […]
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Inspired by a consuming crush, Shy Watson follows her first book (“Away Status,” previously reviewed!) with the equally stunning “My Parents Were Going to Give Me Your Name If I Was Born a Boy.” This short collection of poems, written in a single season, depict what it is like to want and not be wanted, […]
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From her balcony on the 21st floor of a Miami high-rise apartment, a woman, identified as “J,” muses over the comings and goings of neighbors and strangers, all the while contemplating her own solitude. It feels a little voyeuristic, reading the intimate thoughts of a woman being a voyeur herself, and at times even like […]
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The End, By Anna is Adam Zachary’s stunning fiction debut. Vibrant and experimental, it is a true success in fiction writing by a self-proclaimed poet, whose work addresses the fundamental question: What does it mean to make good art? The End, By Anna, published in November 2016 by Montreal’s Metatron press, is a pocket-sized booklet, […]
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There’s nothing like poetry that makes you stop and reread. Poetry you can savour – that clings to the back of your throat, insists on being taken in not just in one sitting. This is the poetry you fall back on, and that, perhaps, you have resting beside you on your bedside table, waiting. It’s […]
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Aziza Barnes’ first full-length poetry collection feels like a study of interiors. The insides of insects, human mouths, burroughs, apartments, the center of a sweaty dance floor, the depths of intestinal lining, and of course, the self. These poems reveal what we do when the exteriors have gotten the best of us. Or what we […]
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You should be longing to read Erin Taylor’s book “oooo,” because these poems are the human definition of longing. They are confessions of actually wanting people to touch you on the metro, feeling cold and distant and needing comfort. Taylor admits, “I mainly bite my nails and sometimes have a person I admire paint them […]
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I remember my first encounter with the term “feminist killjoy.” It was in my gender and media studies class, and we were assigned feminist scholar and writer Sara Ahmed’s Killing Joy: Feminism and the History of Happiness as one of our readings. The term, I’ll admit, had me worried at first – I’d had enough […]
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“Ajebota” refers to the class difference between those who are wealthy and privileged versus “ajepako,” those who are not. It is a privilege to be able to follow the path you love, which, for Precious Okoyomon, is writing. She appropriates different texts and draws inspiration from various sources, including print and Internet. Her poetry compilation, […]
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Marlena Chertock’s debut poetry collection, “On that one-way trip to Mars,” is both warm and chilling, covering not only the expanse of the solar system but also of human emotions and experiences. It is a complete balance of history, science, medicine, and the nature of humanity. All of these areas of life affect each other. […]
Read moreShe’s a self-proclaimed bruja, possibly a real actual pirate, a bookseller, and a nationally recognized spoken word poet who’s part of the 2015 National Poetry Slam championship winning team. Melissa Lozada-Oliva embodies all of these titles and can be found juggling them masterfully in Boston. She’s previously been published in Electric Cereal, Sidelines, Microchondria, and […]
Read moreIt’s tricky to pin down what, exactly, The Irresponsible Magician is, but that’s the fun of it – it defies genre. A work that weaves between essay and fiction, Rebekah Rutkoff’s collection from Semiotext(e) is exploratory and pushes beyond what we have often come to expect from our books – that extra readability that comes […]
Read more“One day, I was not famous, the next day, I was almost famous and the temptation to go wide with that and reject my past was too great.” (8) This is the story Natasha Stagg tells in Surveys with astounding exactness and understanding of that esoteric corner of the internet of which we all, at […]
Read moreDo you remember the way your mother would see you off to school in the morning? Did she sit with you for breakfast, or was she busy in her room, getting ready for the workday? Maybe her own mother used to sit with her for breakfast in the morning, and that’s what’s become routine, along […]
Read more“Away Status” by Shy Watson is a poetry collection that will lead you away from your comfort zone and straight into something so alarmingly honest, you will want to both close the book and keep turning pages. It is hard and easy to read the words of someone who tells the dark secrets that no […]
Read moreThe moment I learned of Elizabeth Tsung’s book, I reached out to her, practically begging to read it. As a girl who spent a good chunk of time and a number of points not feeling pretty, the title called to me immediately. But the book itself, beyond the title, continues to call to me even […]
Read moreBorn in Edmonton, but based in #the6, Vivek Shraya is a an artist whose works span across the mediums of music, film, and writing. She’s put out ten albums, four short films, and three books. An accolade queen, Vivek is a three-time Lambda Literary Award finalist for her books God Loves Hair, She of the […]
Read moreRecently, Carrie Brownstein—actor, comedian, author, and one-third of Riot grrrl band, Sleater-Kinney—posted a snap to Instagram showcasing her copy of I’m very into you laying atop a red background sans any commentary. It’s no wonder that Brownstein didn’t include any words with her picture because this intimate book has a way of rendering the reader […]
Read moreThis isn’t the domestic sphere you know, the one you’re told about. This is a deconstruction, a dismantling, a tearing apart. This is a doing away with expectations – a refusal of the woman’s “role.” In The Filaments of Heather, author Heather Goodrich’s chapbook from Sad Spell Press, we find a woman ridding herself of […]
Read moreAlexandra Wuest’s chapbook “The Female Gaze is Cool” advocates for the elimination of tunnel vision, for a new perspective that shouldn’t be so new. The female gaze is so often an internalized male gaze, a reflection of how other men (and women) see women. But the female gaze should be its own gaze, and these […]
Read moreIf you are searching for the perfect book to read while eating alone at Chipotle, I would recommend Carmen E. Brady’s “Eating Alone at Chipotle.” One person even tweeted at Brady @therealcbrad to admit to the tragicomedy of reading it while eating alone and spilling food all over the pages. You can cry from spices […]
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