Years ago, in a bar, talking about poetry, a friend of mine said, “Poetry. What do you do with that? I guess you could always write chapbooks.” Things have changed since then, and chapbooks (usually fewer than 30 pages of poetry) are not just plentiful, but proliferating. See chapbooks from Tupelo Press, Sarabande (authors Louise [...]
Lee Gulyas
The Cartographer’s Ink Okla Elliott NYQ Books 2014 Gilles Deleuze wrote: “Writing has nothing to do with meaning. It has to do with landsurveying and cartography, including the mapping of countries yet to come.” This is the quote that came to me as I read Okla Elliott’s “The Cartographer’s Ink.” We begin with an invitation [...]
Burn This House Kelly Davio Red Hen Press 2013 Burn or bless? What’s the difference? Why do prayers contain echoes of threats and how do sin and virtue intertwine? These are questions you will find yourself asking as the narrator wanders through darkness lit by moon and lamplight, pierced by the scream of a barn [...]
The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction Edited by Dinty Moore Rose Metal Press 2012 It is refreshing to open a nonfiction craft book that does not begin with an apology. Editor Dinty Moore delves right into a discussion of what is possible when writing “flash” literary nonfiction, “memoir, essay, and factual [...]
To Waken is to Begin by Melanie Faith Aldrich Press 2012 The first poem in this debut collection opens with a bridesmaid’s dress, and in the next we imagine the size and promise of a fetus at eleven weeks. Melanie Faith’s book considers many rites of passage: weddings, pregnancy, a grandmother’s death, cancer. Faith also [...]
Close Quarters Amy Monticello Sweet Publications 2012 In her first book, Amy Monticello begins with a joke, the kind that families tell and retell at picnics and holidays, the kind of joke that not only entertains but becomes legend, that points to larger themes and insight. Monticello sustains this focus on story and insight throughout [...]