CARTOGRAPHIES OF HOME, Priscilla Long, MoonPath Press, 2026. Cartographies of Home, the latest collection of poems from Priscilla Long, divides the poems and her life into three sections, beginning with her childhood on the Eastern Shore of Maryland: turkey buzzards, garter snakes, molasses milk, honeysuckle. In the middle section, the poems escort us through college, […]
LEND ME YOUR WINGS, Lillo Way, Shanti Arts Publishing, 2021. FLYING, TRAPEZE POEMS, Lillo Way, Redbird Chapbooks, 2024. Before Lisa Ashley invited me to read with her and Lillo Way, last fall at Eagle Harbor Books, I had heard of Lillo, but had not had the privilege of meeting her or reading her work. Lillo […]
Another book I’m reading—very, very slowly—is Emily Dickinson: The Gorgeous Nothings, compiled and edited by Marta Werner and Jen Bervin. (Christine Burgin / New Directions, 2013). The work of at least twenty years for the editors, these late fragments and drafts, scribbled on envelopes and the backs of letters, come to life in this edition, […]
POETRY AS SURVIVAL, Gregory Orr, University of Georgia Press, 2002. In the depths of a blues my husband used to call “the Dempsey Dumpster,” I had a dream, or a fragment of dream that woke me in the winter dark, and this single line struck me and stuck with me, long after the details of […]