It’s exasperating when people refer to a work of art as “great” as if that were an objective pronouncement. Great for what? The idea that there could be stable, neutral criteria by which literature could be judged more or less worthy is at best… Continue Reading “A Very Good Anti-Best List”
This intense week, I’m featuring a new collection by activist-editor-poet Sonia Greenfield (check out Rise Up Review sometime, too, for brilliant poems of resistance). Letdown consists of 64 numbered prose poems about pregnancy, birth, raising a special needs child, miscarriage, grief, and recovery. No… Continue Reading “Virtual Salon #13 with Sonia Greenfield”
Dear Mr. Wordsworth, It turns out there is no tranquility. When you read any of Martha Silano’s books, all of them fizzing with brio and invention and awe, you want to start a salon just so you can invite her. As Diane Seuss says… Continue Reading “Virtual Salon #11 with Martha Silano”
I mark up most of my poetry books–prepare to be shocked–IN PEN. I probably started in grad school, before sticky notes came in all those colors and sizes, and inked notes are more legible when you return to a text to teach or write… Continue Reading “Virtual Salon #10 with Ruth Dickey”
Since poetry, like bourbon, has a long shelf life and often a long trajectory of rising to wider attention, I’m including a couple of 2019 authors in this salon series, including Sara M. Robinson. Blurbing her new book, Needville, I wrote, “So many voices… Continue Reading “Virtual Salon #9 with Sara Robinson”
I’ve always liked fierce poems and feminist poems, but it wasn’t that long ago that I noticed how many of the poetry collections I like best are deeply grounded in place. In Tess Taylor’s new collection, Rift Zone, that place is California in a… Continue Reading “Virtual Poetry Salon with Tess Taylor”
And even in blindness our chemistries communicate. Our instinct, a lace mycelium. When my cheeks go hot and I distrust a man I may be sensing the hair as it rises from another woman’s neck. I may smell her experience. We know more than… Continue Reading “Virtual Poetry Salon #5 with Caroline Cabrera”
mapping the nest
A selfish poet
I make photographs and poems to please myself (and share them to please you).
pages from an unbound book
a poetry blog & online home to the work of José Angel Araguz
book blogger & reviewer
Poetry, haiku, tanka, and micropoetry
Art. Disability. Writing.
Place, Poems, Practice
Poetry and what-not
(because compost happens)
The work wants to be made
Writing from both sides of the brain
"This work is unlike any other, in its range of rich, conjuring imagery and its dexterity, its smart voice. Carroll-Hackett doesn’t spare us—but doesn’t save us—she draws a blueprint of power and class with her unflinching pivot: matter-of-fact and tender." —Jan Beatty