Squeaky Wheels: Travels with my Daughter by Train, Plane, Metro, Tuk-tuk and Wheelchair by Suzanne Kamata Review by Lara Lillibridge Suzanne Kamata grew up in Grand Haven, Michigan. She went to Japan to teach English, fell in love,…
Review by Barbara Ellen Sorensen A definitive theme in Margo Taft Stever’s new volume of poetry, Cracked Piano, is the mercurial role of mothers. That motherhood is both a terrifying and transcendent time in many women’s lives is not…
Review by Carole Mertz Maggie Nelson centered her Bluets around its “blue” theme and Inger Christensen around the alphabet. In her book Pansies, Carol Barrett shaped her vignettes around the personality and culture of an Apostolic Lutheran babysitter. Teenage babysitter…
Review by Lara Lillibridge “One word. One breathless syllable, as steady, as fragile, as a hinge. Try to say it softly. If… The sound lingers, the weight of the word hovers.” (75) Deborah Batterman’s novel, just like february, is filled…
Review by Barbara Lawhorn Two and a half years ago, I found myself questioning my identity in the face of a marital separation. Larger than the question of who I was beyond being a wife, was the deeper interrogation of…
Reviewed by Carole Mertz A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Manchester, and a nominee for Best of the Net, Patrice Boyer Claeys is also the recipient of a Certificate in Poetry from the Writer’s Studio…
Reviewed by Michelle Wilbert While reading Laura Grace Weldon’s latest collection of poetry, Blackbird, I found myself anchored to continuity of time, family, place, and human experience woven into pieces glowing with vivid, knowable imagery of the quotidian mysteries that…
Reviewed by Janet McCann Haibun is an unusual form, a short prose piece with one or more haiku attached or inserted. It became popular in 17th century Japan, and has a growing number of practitioners here and now. It provides…
Reviewed by Christine Salvatore We know memory is a passport that never expires. —from “The Hurting Time” What if the day before your wedding the world imploded? What if years later, that marriage unraveled on an ordinary day? Such dichotomies…
Reviewed by Barbara Ellen Sorensen Visits and Other Passages by Carol Smallwood is a collection of poems, short essays, observations and vignettes that take the reader on an intellectual, yet deeply personal odyssey. A reader of this volume quickly realizes…