George Wallace’s One Hundred Years Among the Daisies, Reviewed by David E. Poston

George Wallace One Hundred Years Among the Daisies Stubborn Mule Press Reviewer: David E. Poston One Hundred Years Among the Daisies is a 138-page incantation. I read much of it aloud, pulled along by its “voluptuous doxologies,” by the sheer hypnotism of the phrases and endless sweep of the lines. Alternately consoling and challenging, lyrical […]

Karen Paul Holmes’ No Such Thing as Distance, Reviewed by David E. Poston

Karen Paul Holmes No Such Thing as Distance Terrapin Books Reviewer: David E. Poston Reading No Such Thing as Distance, the new collection from Karen Paul Holmes, I was reminded of hearing poet Cecily Parks talk about how poems need to be generous. No Such Thing as Distance offers readers a rich family history, including […]

George Drew’s Fancy’s Orphan, Reviewed by David E. Poston

George Drew Fancy’s Orphan Tiger Bark Press Reviewer: David E. Poston George Drew’s Fancy’s Orphan is a fascinating mix of voices presented in fluid and supple lines. These poems are Frost-haunted, with echoes of Keats, Wordsworth, Yeats, and Rilke. Their penetrating descriptions present what Hopkins called the inscape of both the natural world and of […]

Erica Goss’s Night Court, Reviewed by David E. Poston

Erica Goss Night Court Glass Lyre Press Reviewer: David E. Poston Erica Goss’s Lyrebird Prize-winning new collection, Night Court, begins by pulling readers into a world of eerie sounds in the dark of night. It positions us on the edge of what the book’s final poem calls the “floating world” between real and surreal. When […]

Eleanor Goodman’s Nine Dragon Island, Reviewed by David E. Poston

Eleanor Goodman Nine Dragon Island Zephyr Press Reviewer: David E. Poston Of her award-winning translation of the poetry of Wang Xiaoni, Eleanor Goodman has written that Wang Xiaoni’s work is marked by “keen detail and the use of ordinary objects—potatoes, trains, mountains, sunlight, dust rags—to create emotional resonance. She leans toward simple but penetrating language, […]