With “Weak Ode to Saffron,” Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad sets out to contain the luminous ingredient in language, in line breaks, in a New York Kitchen. But the saffron is too much, invites too much to be contained: love, Iran, the gnarled…
Lindsay Adkins’ series of poems meditates on the famous character of Jewish literature from a new point of view—revealing, in its turnings and its own unique violences, a brickwork story of a daughter’s redemptive eager. “Fathers are made in the…
Steven Duong’s poetry ripens with bodies, the struggle of skin—and he uses them as locus centers from which he can reach out to disparate realms of the universe and time to make new things of the old: ancient Rome and…
A delicate sonnet cycle, Sophie Klahr’s “PASS WITH CARE” trembles lightly as an inviting hand, stuck out the rolled down window of her car. Here is a road trip so softly lonely that you can’t help but want to hop…
Beyond an excellent title—who is Maddie? where is home?—Michael Hurley’s “Dead Maddie” crunches in the readers mouth: image and sound wonderfully in tune with themes of fragility and loss. Dear Maddie Spring has been cold but with newness +++++on the…
Kimberly Ann Southwick’s “The Heart of the Matter” performs the life of spring with such delicate aural precision—to read the poem is to feel yourself ringing a slim plate of porcelain against the table, listening to the cracks patiently spread,…
We adore this new poem by Taylor D’Amico—how it flirts with the sonnet form, how it maneuvers so gently between the delicate subjects. “Cradle and All” announces an arrival for D’Amico: a poet here to stay. Cradle and All I…
J. David has so elegantly performed the cento sonnet here—each piece fitting in fair relationship. “Lilac Cento as American Sonnet” raises the bar high for contemporary engagement with form. Lilac Cento as American Sonnet Danez Smith, Stanley Kunitz, Rachel Eliza…
Every body is a frontier of survival, and Destiny Hemphill’s poem lays the map bare. The speaker builds a life out of memories pinned to her body, to the palm of her hand and to her ribs and to her…
Do love poems need love? Or just the anxiety of its proximity? Jessica Regione’s “Severity” works so well because that anxiety is delicately laid bare over a wintery afternoon. Modern romance: the unknowable ways we wish to describe the softness…
