Reviewed by Marguerite Pigeon Pests lurk through the pages of Laura Zacharin’s assured first collection, including lice and the titular moths. Nagging, unsettling, preoccupying to the point of distraction, these domestic nuisances are symptomatic—but of what? An unnamed woman in the poem “Common Brown House Moths” can’t shake a dread that builds into physical distress.…

Reviewed by Louise Carson You know a book of poetry has possibilities when the opening epigraph is seven lines from W.S. Merwin’s ‘Ancient World’, which function as a kind of extended haiku, beginning, “Orange sunset/In the deep shell of summer” and ending with “…the sound of a door closing/And at once I am older”. And…

Reviewed by Susan McMaster May 2020 Anna Yin’s new book of poetry has exactly five English words on the cover – her name, the title, Love’s Lighthouse, and the ISBN if you count that as a word. It is, however, covered in Chinese characters in red and black placed in both vertical and horizontal columns,…

Reviewed by Vanessa Shields Martonfi’s fourth book, Salt Bride (Inanna Publications, 2019) is a collection of poetry that begs for companionship. This is not a collection for the faint of heart nor for the reader who doesn’t know her human atrocities his[her]story. The Salt Bride is a deep dive into the atrocities that have brutally…

reviewed by Carole Mertz This review appeared June 2019 at Dreamers Creative Writing. A prolific history lies behind Doyali Islam and her approach to writing poetry. While we may not fully understand the method she applies, we can appreciate the resultant strength of her compositions and respect the idiosyncrasies of the format she created and…