RELIQUENDA, Alexandra Lytton Regalado. Beacon Press, Massachusetts, 2022, 84 pages, $16.95 paper, www.beacon.org. Reliquenda means to abandon, relinquish, or that which must be relinquished. It’s a perfect title for this heart-thumping, amazing book about family, exile, separation, death, and identity. Salvadoran-American poet Regalado knows whereof she speaks. In the words of Reginald Dwayne Betts, who […]
RECKLESS LOVELY, Martha Silano. Saturnalia Books, 105 Woodside Rd., Ardmore, PA 19003, 2014, 88 pages, $15 paper, https://saturnaliabooks.com. I don’t think I’m alone in often picking up poetry books that remind me of my own poems—or poems a couple tiers up, aspirational Bethany Reid poems. But today’s book spun me, and made me want to […]
DUWAMISH HEAD, Richard Hugo. Copperhead, Box 271, Port Townsend, Washington 98368, 1976, 24 pages, out of print. I have an extraordinarily busy day lined up, and beginning early, so I’m sharing with you a chapbook of poems by Richard Hugo, recently passed along to me by a friend who was letting go of some books. […]
BLESS THE DAUGHTER RAISED BY A VOICE IN HER HEAD, Warsan Shire. Random House, New York, 2022, 93 pages, $17.00 paper, https://www.randomhousebooks.com. “No one leaves home unless one’s home is the mouth of a shark” writes Warsaw Shire in her powerful and explosive poem, “Home.” This line sounded so familiar to me that I thought […]