Bruce Bond’s patmos, Reviewed by David E. Poston

Bruce Bond patmos University of Massachusetts Press Reviewer: David E. Poston Section III of patmos, Bruce Bond’s new book-length poetic sequence, begins: I was just another creature crawling from the mausoleum, and I thought, so this is it, the place in the final chapter where I’m judged for my cruelties, blunders, failures of attention, and […]

Mike James’s Leftover Distances, Reviewed by David E. Poston

Mike James Leftover Distances Luchador Press Reviewer: David E. Poston In “Almost Autumn and Time to Go,” from his new collection Leftover Distances, Mike James writes, Everything goes back to travel. Get to heaven or just over there. Some of us stay ready. We live by love or fear. Maybe adventures are one street over. […]

Keith Flynn’s The Skin of Meaning, Reviewed by David E. Poston

Keith Flynn The Skin of Meaning Red Hen Press Reviewed by David E. Poston Keith Flynn might be the love child of William Blake and Etta James. In his latest collection, The Skin of Meaning, he moves easily from whisper to croon to full-throated growl. As in his five earlier collections, he shows his skillful […]

Paul Sohar’s In Sun’s Shadow, Reviewed by David E. Poston

Paul Sohar In Sun’s Shadow Ragged Sky Press Reviewed by David E. Poston Paul Sohar’s long experience as a translator of Hungarian poets such as Miklós Radnóti, Zoltán Böszörményi, and György Faludy has informed his own poetry in fascinating ways. In his new collection, In Sun’s Shadow, we see a clear preference for concrete language […]

Jared Smith’s That’s How It Is, Reviewed by David E. Poston

Jared Smith That’s How It Is Stubborn Mule Press Reviewer: David E. Poston Jared Smith’s new collection, That’s How It Is, is prefaced by a passage from Rilke’s novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge which describes how poetry is not simply expressed feelings, but the product of experience internalized over time. Smith’s career now […]