"That’s what Stephanie Cawley’s book is about. Being in the middle of systems, whether it’s a system called “plot” or “loving relationship” or “hot sex.” Systems that surround them like a cocoon." from my review of Stephanie Cawley's No More Flowers: www.thekalliope.org/review-no-mo...

"Declaration screens from me the truth that throws the poet into declaring these things rather than granting the direct access a declarative statement would carry." from my review of Elisa Gonzalez's Grand Tour www.thekalliope.org/review-grand...

"And I am trying my hardest to live a life on earth. Just like Miller has asked me to. I’d like to imagine the different spaces where you could draw an emotional cul-de-sac." from my review of Nora Claire Miller's Groceries: www.thekalliope.org/review-groce...

What G. C. Waldrep does with "grievance" and faith in this poem published a while ago in Bennington Review is remarkable. Who lodges grievance with whom in a relationship with God? www.thekalliope.org/it-s-never-t...

"I’ve heard him described as a political poet. Capable of seeing what political structures are borne out of people living in a city, living in northern climates. Arranged according to these political structures." from my review of George Oppen's This In Which: www.thekalliope.org/review-this-...

"How does the cheerleader fit alongside the considerate math teacher fit alongside the aging woman whose private life feels distant from the feminine life she’d occupied." from my review of Laura Read's But She Is Also Jane www.thekalliope.org/review-but-s...

"But where Smith lays out order, with boxes boxing one another in, Webb’s garden, or her house lays out the bewildering heaven she occupies in her grief." from my micro-REVIEW of Lindsey Webb's Plat: www.thekalliope.org/micro-review...

Ryan Taylor has captured the poetry existing in the between space of "masculinity" and "Americanism" in his poem "American Planet." I've written an enthusiastic consideration of that space at the link. www.thekalliope.org/Not-just-a-p...

"Some might say the key to enjoying a Natalie Shapero poem is knowing how to laugh." from my review of Natalie Shapero's Stay Dead www.thekalliope.org/review-stay-...

"Her genre is not the instruction manual. More like what do you feel like immediately after you’ve read a set of instructions." from my recent review of Valerie Hsiung's The Naif: www.thekalliope.org/review-the-n...

"Koestenbaum is really into reality, and art is reality or runway or state of mind or perspective or a bunch of lewd acts that puts the randy in a name like “Randy.” Include the quotations." from my goodreads review of Wayne Koestenbaum's Stubble Archipelago www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

"His poems belong to whatever space is carved when the world, or the place you’re from, or the dominant culture, sets a fire, and everywhere you look, it rings around your existence." from my goodreads review of Isaac Pickell's It's not over once you figure it out www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

"In essence, the poems fashion the self as a delicate formation. Someone who’s in process, in transition to a new outlook on life, with a new self to do that looking." from my goodreads review of Shelley Wong's As She Appears www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

"Nordgren’s book is hard for me to describe. Maybe it’s writing that got caught in costume. Dressed as a period piece for a fashion magazine." from my goodreads review of Sarah Rose Nordgren's Feathers: A Bird-Hat Wearer's Journal www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

"It’s like Ashbery wants you to combine a lava lamp with a villanelle. First, a line with an imaginative twist on a present circumstance, and by the next line it’s morphed into a different shape." from my goodreads review of Hotel Lautréamont, by John Ashbery www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

"The relationship between irony and wonder often feels uneven to me. Irony is so tall, incisive, and imposing on a sentence or a poem" from my goodreads review of Rosmarie Waldrop's The Nick of Time www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

"In Zhou’s book, the triangulation is more sustained. Which allows for especially evocative commentary on who she perceives herself to be, and who she is now after the different pressures that come with adulthood." from my goodreads review of Amelia Zhou's Repose www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

"In here, doing-ness revolves mainly around the temporality or shapeliness of an impression. What it takes to experience a moment, while many other moments inflect upon your experience of that moment." from my goodreads review of Bill Carty's We Sailed on the Lake www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

If you like clowns of all sorts, Sreshtha Sen's poem, "Exceprt from Crown Clown[ed]" (originally in Action, Spectacle) is for you. I was definitely feeling it, so I wrote a close read. thekalliope.org/excerpt-from...

"One of the challenges to life is knowing how to treat the mundane like it’s meaningless. Which is why I would say Ashbery is resigned to letting LOTS just be his life." from my book review of John Ashbery's Can You Hear, Bird thekalliope.org/lets-expansi...

"Is the poet's childhood authentic in the way she has learned authenticity from outside sources? From friends or even acquaintances she remembers meeting once, which she describes in “A Lunch Date.”" from my goodreads review of Jennifer Chang's An Authentic Life www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

"Bolsover’s book is like the sharp inquisitive stance Anne Carson maintains about Greek mythology, but lay that inquisition on this bed of striking red petals. from my goodreads review of Tessa Bolsover's Crane www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

"With pringle, though, it’s the membrane between self and outside the self. The social pressures that come when an individual thinks, I might be belonging to a ‘we’ right now.” from my goodreads review of kathryn l. pringle's Obscenity for the Advancement of Poetry www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

"The book is concerned with darkness, coupled with the perspective clouded by how familiar the poet is with this darkness." from my goodreads review of John Sibley Williams's Skin Memory www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

"I am bought in to the book’s overarching concept, its keen interest in cybernetics and AI. Its inquiry into human experience. How much of being human involves occupying the natural world?" from my goodreads review of Olga Ravn's The Employees www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

"Xanax Cowboy is as much an extended monologue of mistaken identity as they are a WTF is this identity I’m being mistaken for. And, yes, there is outrage compelling the poems forward." from my goodreads review of Hannah Green's Xanax Cowboy www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

I think T. S. Eliot's "First Voice" vs "Second Voice" can provide an interesting angle for reading Rodney Gomez's poem, "Genealogy" (found originally at The Boiler). Or that's what I'm talking about here: thekalliope.org/genealogy-by...

"Willis’s book privileges the frayed edges of historical record. It's like visiting an archive, and you’ve been sifting through materials for the whole day, and now it’s everywhere on the table." from my goodreads review of Elizabeth Willis's Liontaming in America www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

I feel like I also could have said Abigail Chabitnoy's "Hawking Rabbit Feet in the Age of Disbelief" uses an organic form to uncover its argument. I said this instead. thekalliope.org/hawking-rabb...

"Let’s face it, Ashbery is the most there poet there is. The poetics of suddenly realizing, but burying all that sudden realization in rhetoric so that it’s not all the time clear there was a there there." from my goodreads review of John Ashbery's April Galleons www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

What I really enjoy about Stefania Gomez's poem "Wreck" is its occupation of a between. It can be silly. It can be somber. And it's the occupation between those I'm trying to write about on my blog. thekalliope.org/wreck-by-ste...

I'd like to think this is a fair, critical reading of Emily Lee Luan's book, Return. And what I mean by critical is I register my delight that the book accomplishes its ambition. thekalliope.org/sorrow-frame...

"A city can serve an individual’s ennui, and within that flat affect can exist the urge to say something new, to notice someone who would have gone overlooked, or to stir a fantasy." from my goodreads review of Charles Baudelaire's Paris Spleen www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Hi yes the coda of my book touches upon this as well as like three articles I have recently written about the inefficiency of humanistic study!! I will be annoying about this forever probably!

Submissions OPEN for the Wisconsin Poetry Series @uwiscpress.bsky.social ! Daniel Borzutzky is this year's judge for the Wisconsin Translation Prize! Airea D. Matthews for the Brittingham and Pollak Prize. Finalists are also chosen for publication! wicw.submittable.com/submit

"Because so much of this book smells. Like if you’re going to read it, prepare to be nauseous. Prepare to laugh at how the world is." from my goodreads review of Kim Hyesoon's All the Garbage of the World, Unite! www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Reading Emily Lee Luan's "From weeping into weeping," I realize how impressionable I am. It's like I want to give in to as many readings as I think the poem suggests. I talk about that in this blog post: thekalliope.org/from-weeping...

"I read the book like I’m reading the B-sides of Letters to Wendy’s. And to be specific, the B-sides of Dead Letter Office to Document that happened with REM over the Amnesiac to Kid A of Radiohead." from my goodreads review of Joe Wenderoth's It Is If I Speak www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

"Think of how every rose has its thorns, think of each thorn as a dimension, then think of de Parry’s imagination tangling the thorniness into a network of situations." from my goodreads review of Zan de Parry's Cold Dogs www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

I posted a book review for @agdietzman.bsky.social's Sweet Movie. thekalliope.org/a-movies-aff...

"Like a long sentence provides mimetic access to the poet’s personal comfort, a personal quiet, and then what he might do with all that." I probably don't understand Ron Silliman's "Quietism." But in close reading Jeff Stonic's poem, "oscillating," I attempt to some. thekalliope.org/oscillating-...

"I would argue the speaker in Apology for Want is like a version of Elizabeth Bishop preparing the way for Mary Jo Bang’s Louise, who appears in her second book, Louise in Love." from my goodreads review of Mary Jo Bang's Apology for Want www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

"Is it viable to live life in a state that passes between "that's it!” and “that’s it?" A poetry of simply dealing with things." My close reading of Stephanie Cawley's poem, "Brutal Fiction" Published in Bennington Review): thekalliope.org/brutal-ficti...

"That’s the poetry of Dykstra’s book. The awareness of place, the commitment to accuracy, like a map is accurate, and the natural, observational statement a map makes." from my goodreads review of Kristin Dykstra's Dissonance www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

"I've always liked thinking that sin isn't really that sinful in the eyes of God, because when I sin, I'm conscious of God. God’s on my mind." from my thoughts on @agdietzman.bsky.social's poem "Yet." It is assuredly sinful to read the poem. Proceed with caution! thekalliope.org/yet-by-alish...

"...these historic poems think about the various ways history can be viewed in the present. About visiting historical sites, and the difference between those that have been tamped down by tourist activities..." from my goodreads review of Patty Nash's Walden Pond www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

"If reading for what goes through someone’s mind while they anticipate satisfying others’ needs, and kind of “not giving a fuck” about what people in the suburbs say, this book is for you." from my goodreads review of Kay Gabriel's A Queen in Bucks County www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

"It puts me in mind of the sharp, mysterious gestures violence reveals in the book. It directs the poem to a consciousness the poet has of her body." from my goodreads review of Gabrielle Bates's Judas Goat www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

"To read Robertson's book is to participate in the present tense, and at the margins of inquiry, and to actively fray statements that might sound like questions." from my goodreads review of Lisa Robertson's Boat www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

"Philomath is more knowing the consequences of parental love. Especially how it’s suffocating the way you might imagine incubation is suffocating." from my goodreads review of Devon Walker-Figueroa's Philomath www.goodreads.com/review/show/...