"I read Browne’s poems as a caution against love. Because there is a way love can sublime the world. It can unfold the world, like watching a dance troupe shape itself into a flower blooming." from my review of Mahogany L. Browne's Chrome Valley: www.thekalliope.org/review-chrom...

"One of the challenges of books that avidly embrace a larger project is negotiating the immensity felt by the poet and the actual content the poet is going to give the reader access to." from my review of Sophia Terazawa's Oracular Maladies www.thekalliope.org/review-oracu...

"Alidio’s Traceable Relation addresses the didactic. In particular, the presumption that didactic writing could truly lead its reader to a set meaning, leading to meanings through a variety of mediums." from my review of Kimberly Alidio's Traceable Relation: www.thekalliope.org/review-trace...

"But there is a depth to disaster that dwells in the personal. It’s a rhythm the disaster uses to play through the body. It’s a portioning, as Triplett reveals in Bad Forecast." from my review of Steffan Triplett's Bad Forecast www.thekalliope.org/review-bad-f...

"Like these are the monologues when you barely have time to think. Because the glamorous life is always pressing in on the self." from my review of Sadie Dupuis's Cry Perfume www.thekalliope.org/review-cry-p...

Cindy Juyong Ok's translations in a recent issue of Gulf Coast were so good. I took some extra time to write about Kim Hyesoon's "In Front of a Round Wall" www.thekalliope.org/everything-c...

"On another level, though, the book is about women growing through girlhood to arrive at what seems inevitable, the life of a mother." from my review of Diamond Forde's The Book of Alice www.thekalliope.org/review-the-b...

"Unfortunately, the lyric does not ensure 1:1 representation, especially when it comes to something like generational trauma." from my review of Asiya Wadud's No Knowledge Is Complete Until It Passes Through My Body www.thekalliope.org/review-no-kn...

"Zhang’s book feels like family, being trapped in family. Or being trapped in that moment when you’re getting shit off your chest, maybe about someone named Michael..." from my review of Jenny Zhang's Dear Jenny, We Are All Find www.thekalliope.org/review-dear-...

"The glacier leaves the impression of stagnancy; it’s literally frozen in time. And this reality makes it an especially sharp analogy for grief." from my review of Danika Stegeman's Ablation: www.thekalliope.org/review-ablat...

"She is often weighted with a concern to really understand what concerns her. And out of those layering concerns, a series of impressions emerge. But those impressions aren’t presented in a syllogistic style." from my review of Tracy Fuad's Portal www.thekalliope.org/review-portal

"For me, Molnar’s lyric essay, “Minutes: A Remembrance” comes closest to the layering complexity I appreciated in her first book, CHORUS." from my review of Daniela Naomi Molnar's Protocols: An Erasure www.thekalliope.org/review-proto...

"The poems are more about nature framing what the poet has to say. Or nature blurring past the natural environment so you can read the human nature feeling you get while you’re in nature!" from my review of Ben Estes's ABC Moonlight www.thekalliope.org/review-abc-m...

"Bludworth de Barrio’s poetics feels like an atonal orchestral work. The kind whose notes touch the familiar, but also deviate from that familiarity in an unsettling but satisfactory fashion." from my review of Emily Bludworth de Barrios's Rich Wife www.thekalliope.org/review-rich-...

"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/...