Charlotte Muse’s In Which I Forgive the River, Reviewed by Lee Rossi

Charlotte Muse In Which I Forgive the River Broadstone Books Reviewer: Lee Rossi Parable, fable, fairy tale: when a moralist wishes a lighter touch than your typical sermon or tirade, lighter even than allegory, she resorts to stealthier forms of persuasion, familiar to the child in each of us. Charlotte Muse is such a moralist, […]

Barbara Hamby’s Holoholo, Reviewed by Lee Rossi

Barbara Hamby Holoholo University of Pittsburgh Press Reviewer: Lee Rossi How to describe a book as filled with delights as Barbara Hamby’s Holoholo. Ostensibly a book of odes, these are not just poems of praise; she urges her readers to construe the term “ode” in the widest possible sense: as a “poetic stance, a poetic […]

Hayden Saunier’s A Cartography of Home, Reviewed by Lee Rossi

Hayden Saunier A Cartography of Home Terrapin Books Reviewer: Lee Rossi Hayden Saunier is one of those poet farmers who are distinctive in our culture for their scarcity. We remember Frost. We may know Donald Hall and Wendell Berry. We may even recall Horace, with an estate gifted by his patron Maecenas and worked by […]

Al Maginnes’s Sleeping through the Graveyard Shift, Reviewed by Lee Rossi

Al Maginnes Sleeping through the Graveyard Shift Redhawk Publications Reviewer: Lee Rossi Even after seven books and numerous chapbooks, Al Maginnes shows no signs of tiring. Sleeping Through the Graveyard Shift, Maginnes’s new book, has an easier, more relaxed feel than his earlier work, yet it is filled with passion and compassion. The subjects are […]

klipschutz’s Premeditations, Reviewed by Lee Rossi

klipschutz Premeditations Hoot ‘n’ Waddle Reviewer: Lee Rossi A literary history for our time, klipschutz’s Premeditations provides one man’s overview of American poetry—the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly—from Whitman and Dickinson to the near present. According to the foreword, klipschutz’s love affair with literature began as a young teenager stoned and languishing in Indio, […]