Erica Wright

Transcending Multiculturalism: A Review of Love and Strange Horses

I reviewed Nathalie Handal's disarming Love and Strange Horses in Issue 17 of Poetry International. The ambition of this collection is perhaps the purest that lyric poetry claims, that of music's immediacy. As the poet asks in "The Songmaker—19 Arabics," "Who said we need to be strangers, / when we listen to the same music?" 

More than any other journal, Poetry International surprises me with its panoply of writers. There is always someone, often many someones, new to discover. At $15, this six-hundred page issue of Poetry International is a steal.

A Review of Mark Jarman's Bone Fires: New and Selected Poems

Mark Jarman tackles the tricky topic of faith with curiosity and insight. In the latest issue of ForeWord Reviews, I write about Jarman's Bone Fires: New and Selected Poems:

There are many charms in reading a writer’s selected poems, not least of which is perspective. The reader feels like an airplane passenger watching one landscape turn into another. It is possible see where the plains cede to foothills and foothills to mountains—in short, one seems to notice everything at once. Continue reading here...

Recommended: Aleš Šteger's The Book of Things

I have been thinking about Neruda’s odes (to artichokes, suits, bees, and other everyday objects) because Slovenian poet Aleš Šteger tackles a related project in his collection Knjiga Reci (The Book of Things), recently published by BOA Editions. These fifty poems embody, address, and reconfigure objects ranging from graters to urinals. It is a rare treat to have an English translation before the ink has dried on the original. By which I mean, a mere five years after the book’s Slovenian publication, Brian Henry has brought these poems to life for those of us not lucky enough to read Slovenian. I recommend it HERE. 

 

Enough Already! Just Post the Review!

I've been talking a lot about Joanie Mackowski's latest collection of poems, View from a Temporary Window. Thankfully, my review is finally out, so I can spare my students and friends more gushing. The review is part of a larger piece that looks at contemporary poetry presses. I picked the University of Pittsburgh because it's one of my favorites. They publish Bob Hicock, Barbara Hamby, Nathalie Handal, and yes, Mackowski. You can read the entire article, "Poets at Home: Publishing Houses that Poetry Built," in the latest issue of ForeWord Reviews, or online HERE.

Live from the Homesick Jamboree

My latest review in ForeWord Reviews is of Adrian Blevins's Live from the Homesick Jamboree:

Although death is frequently evoked in Adrian Blevins’s latest collection, not even drowning can kill the speaker of these poems. As the title suggests, she is what’s coming live (electrified?) from the homesick jamboree. She is sometimes self-deprecating, as in “School of the Arts,” in which she refers to herself as “like some forever raggedy thing forever underwater.” However, there is no doubt of the character’s strength as she navigates her raucous childhood. What is momentarily perplexing is her nostalgia for those days. CONTINUE...

Self-Portrait with Crayon by Allison Benis White

The poems of Self-Portrait with Crayon are haunted. There are no ghosts or goblins lurking, but rather an absent mother and Edgar Degas.

The two apparitions seem unconnected until Allison Benis White skillfully commingles them. The first poem of this collection, “From Degas’ Sketchbook,” finds the speaker hiding in a closet, imagining her mother: “The shoulders are the span of the hanger and the mind is the hook which suspends the entire dress.” It is as if the outline of the clothes allows her to color her mother into the picture and into the book. Continue...

 

 

When She Named Fire: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by American Women

Unwieldy and heavy, promising as much backache as discovery, the poetry anthology is a staple of the college classroom. It is difficult to imagine such a text being as enjoyable as it is educational, but recently the anthology has gotten a makeover. Independent presses are tackling smaller areas of the poetic landscape, and the result is books that can be read cover to cover. When She Named Fire is substantive, weighing in at 461 poems, but it is not unmanageable. This text belongs on a nightstand as easily as it belongs in American Poetry 230--a credit to editor Andrea Hollander Budy. Continue...

Sarah Lindsay's Twigs and Knucklebones

In her latest collection of poems, Twigs and Knucklebones, Sarah Lindsay revels in the pleasure of being omniscient. Writer and reader alike enjoy the privilege of superhuman knowledge in poems that blur the line between the apocryphal and the real world. A spider crawls out from the ash in “Elegy from Quagga” as if to say, “Not yet;” however damaged, the world remains.

To read my entire review of Sarah Lindsay's Twigs and Knucklebones for ForeWord Reviews, go HERE.

 

State of the Union

I review State of the Union: 50 Political Poems for ForeWord Reviews, HERE.

State of the Union is newly released by Wave Books and edited by Matthew Zapruder and Joshua Beckman.

 

Kazim Ali's The Fortieth Day

I review Kazim Ali's new collection for ForeWord Reviews, HERE.