REVIEW: TRACE EVIDENCE BY CHARIF SHANAHAN (TIN HOUSE)
Trace Evidence is intensely complex and immediate, layered and poignant, positioned perfectly as a deeply personal and yet deeply relatable collection. – Ronnie K. Stephens
Trace Evidence is intensely complex and immediate, layered and poignant, positioned perfectly as a deeply personal and yet deeply relatable collection. – Ronnie K. Stephens
I hold my breath to tempt the light. This portrait should engage the interest of some decorous and cultivated gent accustomed to the ways of wooing. All my life I’ve sent so many men so many signals, just to be upstaged… From “7” Patricia Smith reasserts herself as one
Armed with surrealism, Stoddard breaks free from the constraints of reality in order to tap into the realm of the irrational and dreamlike. – Martins Deep
Astronauts claim it takes leaving earth to know earth, how alone and woven we are, o zone, how wondrously thin the layer of glow defending us from obliteration. From “March in the Garden of Ghosts” Cynthia Dewi Oka draws on newly classified documents around the 1965 genocide
Through Passin’s use of varying structures, consistent diction, powerful imagery, and unique metaphors, it will seem… you are borrowing her body and feeling it as your very own. – Ciraco
Zeina Hashem Beck quickly and repeatedly establishes herself as one of the most talented formal technicians in contemporary poetry – Ronnie K. Stephens
Join Chris in conversation with former United States Poet Laureate and author of Musical Tables (Random House), Billy Collins, about passions, process, pitfalls, and Poetry!
Olzmann’s choice to fully immerse himself in the epistle offers a chance to display his range of voice, to give space to seemingly disparate social inequities, to remain constantly intimate in his conversation with the reader.
Overdue for a reset
Been climbing mountains and mountains
But I haven’t peaked yet
Still gotta eat yet
– Reggie Johnson
Who’s gonna love you
If you can’t love yourself
Because the actions that you did
Were bad for my mental health
– Reggie Johnson
For me it’s sink or swim
Too many people I extended branches
And gone out on a limb
The switch up is contagious
Many do it on a whim
– Reggie Johnson
Connotary is an incantation into remembrance. And an edification from where one has been and is always going. And still is also this gift, this display, of honor and renewal. – Melissa Ferrer
What sustains us? What nourishes our bones and our souls? How do we sustain each other? In the space between our most authentic selves and our most complicated desires, how do we connect with one another?
In each poem, readers can feel the undeniable aspect that, like nearly all mixtapes, this chapbook is for somebody (at the very least, the amalgamation of “you” that exists in all of our longings).
Didn’t know what depression felt like
Until I was nineteen
It took my crown and the jewels
And said it was fit to be king
Animals burn. Volcanos erupt. We aren’t told the story necessarily as it is; we are told how it feels to live and remember it.