Review by Mindy Kronenberg What is it about the pressures of forgiveness that plagues and propels us? We live our lives in pursuit of knowledge, happiness, and love, and despite any accolades and earnest gestures toward fortifying our own…
Courtney Kessel – “In Balance With” and Other Works Courtney Kessel’s inventive collaborative works with her daughter Chloe use Kessel’s initial script or score, but rely on each performer’s interpretations and contributions. She notes, “I guess the best way…
Review by Barbara Lawhorn In Laura Bernstein-Machlay’s gorgeous debut collection of essays, Travelers, readers journey with an extraordinarily honest author who inquires deeply into place, past, the people who inform us, and how these glimmering threads knot within our…
Review by Cammy Thomas Alison Stone has written three chapbooks, and six full-length collections of poetry, including Masterplan, a collaboration with Erik Greinke, and They Sing At Midnight, winner of the 2003 Many Mountains Moving award. Widely published, she…
Review by Laura Dennis Back in graduate school, I discovered prose poet Francis Ponge, who famously said, “Another way of approaching the thing is to consider it unnamed, unnamable.” I was fascinated by his way of looking at the…
Review by Emily Webber Lisa A. Sturm’s debut novel, Echoed in My Bones, does not avoid the hard and complicated aspects of adoption, the foster care system, and dealing with past trauma. However, Sturm also manages to pull a thread…
Review by Tasslyn Magnusson The Book of Kells, by Barbara Crooker, opens with the evocative line, “Night opens its woven basket,” (3) from the poem “Samhain.” This was unexpected and delightful. Unexpected as when the “Introduction” describes the Book…
MER VOX Quarterly – Winter 2019 December, 2019 Sacred Spaces: A Poetry Folio Curated by Cindy Veach and Jennifer Martelli Featured Poets: Angelique Zobitz Anna V. Q. Ross Mary Buchinger Bodwell Allison Blevins Tina Kelley Adina…
Curated by Jennifer Martelli and Cindy Veach In her poem, “We manage limited resources against unlimited needs,” Angelique Zobitz writes, So we cleave to one another tight as wet clothes plastered to damp bodies. The poems in this…
Anna V. Q. Ross Heaven Knows It’s like this—some days, you wake up and the light in the field is like swimming or moving through a clear fog, something that pushes back, not startling but steady pressure, the wall-to-wall of…