Book Reviews | Tarpaulin Sky Magazine
TELLING YOU WHAT TO THINK SINCE 2003 | IMAGE: NOAH SATERSTROM
Book Reviews | Tarpaulin Sky Magazine
TELLING YOU WHAT TO THINK SINCE 2003 | IMAGE: NOAH SATERSTROM
Geoffrey Babbitt’s “Appendices Pulled from a Study on Light” reviewed by Michael McKee Green
"Babbitt transmutes the language he was offered through Catholicism into the language of his readings of margins, and in turn, marginalia: the strophe of the book is transmuted into centerpiece: apostrophe. What else but alchemy or poetry could do that?"
Keston Sutherland’s “Whither Russia” reviewed by Lindsey Appell
Lindsey Appell reviews British poet Keston Sutherland’s eighteenth collection, "Whither Russia" (Barque Press, 2017).
Marty Cain’s “Kids of the Black Hole” reviewed by Evan Gray
"[H]ybrid coat of feathers and fur ... bathed in punk rock, metal, old skate ramps, and the gym shower, as well as the toxic landscape of memory that is both lichen-drenched and cut with light. Night terrors shimmer off the page with each long line, each breath, each shift in the wet dirt." -- Evan Gray on Kids of the Black Hole by Marty Cain.
Sarah Rosenthal’s “Lizard” Reviewed By Nicholas Leaskou
"Can a lizard’s thermoregulation be compared to the female human cycle? And is the reptilian parietal eye comparable to the human psychic third eye? By the end of Lizard, readers might feel at one with this fragile, resilient and adaptable survivor."
Fox Frazier-Foley’s “Like Ash In The Air After Something Has Burned” Reviewed By Jasmine An
"Frazier-Foley unflinchingly points out humans’ capacity for cruelty, and the realities of gendered violence that are still familiar to many of us in the present day. Yet, even as the body falls prey to the bodies of others, the voices of these poems press on, seeking in their own bodily dissolution/evolution what they were denied in flesh."
Kate Durbin and Amaranth Borsuk’s “ABRA” reviewed by Lisa A. Flowers
"Abra (short for cadabra), the brainchild of poets Kate Durbin and Amaranth Borsuk and designer Ian Hatcher, is a wormhole for the era ... one that's a cosmic, fangy, hallucinogenically-venomed, Edenic pleasure to bite into."
“Political Punch” reviewed by Michael T. Young
Michael T. Young reviews Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity, edited by Fox Frazier-Foley & Erin Elizabeth Smith (Sundress Publications, 2016): “A collection that speaks to our culture and time, and will only become more relevant as the next few years unfold.”
Michelle Detorie’s “After-Cave” reviewed by Nathan Hauke
"Michelle Detorie’s After-Cave scavenges a post-apocalyptic wasteland, fallout of a brutal misogynistic culture of privilege, to mine energy (magic) that has long been violently and systemically suppressed."
Barbara Duffey’s “Simple Machines” reviewed by Christine Stewart-Nuñez
"Simple Machines, which aptly won the 2015 Washington Prize (The Word Works), [is] a must-read book for all lovers of poetry as well as readers with affection for physics."
Brandon Brown’s “The Four Seasons” Reviewed by Chris Tysh
"Captivates with its joie de vivre ... hinges on a carnivalesque lens through which the poet filters the body and its boundless passions. The corporeal enters the poem like a string quartet: bladder, teeth, asshole, knees, all playing their minor fugues, erotic and elemental...."
Claire Wahmanholm’s “Night Vision” Reviewed by Joe Sacksteder
Joe Sacksteder reviews "Night Vision" by Claire Wahmanholm (New Michigan Press, 2017). Although it "implicates poetry as one of the obscuring forces ... 'Night Vision' will help you see in the dark."
Stephanie Young’s “It’s No Good Everything’s Bad” reviewed by Avren Keating
"How does an engaged individual accept the deep urge to confront all political and personal crises while also accepting that would be damn near impossible?"
Katie Jean Shinkle’s “Ruination,” reviewed by Meghan Lamb
"Condensing a war, an outbreak, an apocalyptic flourishing of the sky, and a girl’s coming of age evolution into the length of a novella....Leaving us in a state of exploded-open Ruination, Shinkle slyly invites us to pick up the pieces, to reassemble ourselves anew."
Caroline Manring’s “Manual for Extinction” reviewed by Julia Madsen
"Caroline Manring’s Manual for Extinction exquisitely traces an ecopoetics of loss in the face of industrialism and myths of progress, revealing through nuance and beauty the 'news that stays news.'"
Selah Saterstrom’s “Ideal Suggestions: Essays In Divinatory Poetics,” reviewed by Abby Hagler
Abby Hagler reviews Selah Saterstrom's brilliant Ideal Suggestions: Essays In Divinatory Poetics (Essay Press, 2017): "A book dedicated to not only showing the link between the diviner and the writer, but also to helping a reader recognize the diviner within."