Author Archive for: bethaot2

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Entries by Bethany

Tina Barr, PINK MOON

June 21, 2024 /0 Comments/in Reading /by Bethany

You can find this week’s poetry book review at Escape Into Life — just follow this link: https://www.escapeintolife.com/book-reviews/pinkmoon100888/ Yes, I know I’m behind, but I’ll be back next week with more.

Adam Zagajewski, TRUE LIFE

June 9, 2024 /4 Comments/in Poetry, Reading /by Bethany

TRUE LIFE, Adam Zagajewski, trans. Clare Cavanaugh. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 120 Broadway, New York 10271, 2019, 80 pages, $16 paper, www.fsgbooks.com. I have been a fan of Adam Zagajewski’s poetry ever since his “Try to Praise the Mutilated World” appeared in the New Yorker the week after 9/11. I bought his selected poems, Without End […]

Sandra Noel, WHAT THE PAIN LEFT

June 1, 2024 /0 Comments/in Healing, Poetry, Reading /by Bethany

WHAT THE PAIN LEFT, Sandra Noel. Kelsay Books, 502 South 1040 East, A-119, American Fork, Utah 84003, 2024, 56 pages, $20 paper, Kelsaybooks.com. Although it is always a pleasure to read poems by Vashon Island poet Sandra Noel, this book felt very different from the two I have previously reviewed, Hawk Land (2022) and The Gypsy […]

Good Poetry for Hard Times

May 14, 2024 /7 Comments/in aging, Healing, Poetry, Reading, Writing /by Bethany

I have mentioned my upcoming class, Good Poetry for Hard Times, to you before, and posted the announcement on my Home page with other events, but this evening I’m taking a moment to promote it again. In short: My Creative Retirement Institute (CRI) class begins May 24 and continues for a total of four Fridays, […]

Blog

Victoria Doerper, WHAT IF WE ALL BLOOMED?November 14, 2024 - 6:52 pm
WHAT IF WE ALL BLOOMED? POEMS OF NATURE, LOVE, AND AGING, Victoria Doerper. Penchant Press International, Bellingham, WA, 2019, 94 pages, paper, $15.95. What If We All Bloomed? is a perfect title for this book of meditative poems. Here’s a poet who can celebrate marriage in one poem, and claim kinship with frogs in the […]
When Artists Go to WorkNovember 9, 2024 - 10:40 pm
I meant to show up today to do a blog-review/appreciation of Ada Limón’s 2011 collection of poems, Sharks in the River. It felt like appropriate reading for this week. (And, indeed, it is.) A woman of color, our national poet laureate. The problem being, I can’t seem to pull a review together. Time is not […]
Election DayNovember 5, 2024 - 6:25 pm
I know I have been strangely silent about the U. S. election — in this venue at least. My family of origin used to be decent, working-class Republicans. Something I didn’t even know until I discovered how much my father admired Ronald Reagan. Now they are die-hard MAGA Republicans. It hurts my heart. If I […]
Jed Myers, LEARNING TO HOLDNovember 2, 2024 - 5:34 pm
LEARNING TO HOLD, Jed Myers. Wandering Aengus Press, Eastsound, WA, 100 pages, paper, $18.60, https://wanderingaenguspress.com. I have a soft spot for any book published by Wandering Aengus Press—their publications include the anthology, For Love of Orcas, a gorgeous tribute book published in 2019. Jed Myers’s Learning to Hold won the Wandering Aengus Press Editors’ Award, […]
Paulann Petersen’s MY KINDREDOctober 27, 2024 - 12:19 am
MY KINDRED, Paulann Petersen. Salmon Poetry Press, Cliffs of Moher, County Clare, Ireland, 2023, 108 pages, paper, $14.95, salmonpoetry.com. I read My Kindred in August. I was sprawled on the guest bed in my friend’s daughter’s house in a suburb of Portland, Oregon. Everyone else was napping (baby, grandma, mama). I was basking in the light of […]
Sheila Sondik’s LIGHTING UP THE DUFFOctober 19, 2024 - 2:38 am
LIGHTING UP THE DUFF, Sheila Sondik. The Poetry Box, Portland, OR, 2024, 48 pages, paper, $14.00, https://thepoetrybox.com. I love this chapbook by Bellingham poet and printmaker Sheila Sondik. I read it before publication and wrote one of the cover blurbs. I read it again during the Sealey Challenge in August. And again, today. New delights […]
Karen Rigby’s FABULOSAOctober 12, 2024 - 4:37 pm
“Poetry’s work is the clarification and magnification of being. Each time we enter its word-woven and musical invocation, we give ourselves over to a different mode of knowing: to poetry’s knowing, and to the increase of existence it brings, unlike any other.” — Jane Hirshfield, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry I decided this […]
Kevin Craft, TRAVERSEOctober 2, 2024 - 3:55 pm
TRAVERSE, Kevin Craft. Lynx House Press, Spokane, WA, 2024, 130 pages, $25, lynxhousepress.com. I’ve known Kevin Craft a long time. We were colleagues at Everett Community College, beginning in 1998, and our bond of poetry drew us into friendship. He was always the star, with awards and grants and travel—including to France each summer to […]
Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein), GOD IN HER RUFFLED DRESSSeptember 28, 2024 - 9:32 pm
GOD IN HER RUFFLED DRESS, Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein). What Books Press, 363 South Topanga Canyon Boulevard, Topanga, CA 90290, 2023, 110 pages, $17.00, paper, https://www.whatbookspress.com. Just a little shout-out this afternoon for singer / poet Lisa B, whose book, God in Her Ruffled Dress, I reviewed for Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature for […]
HONEYCOMB, poems by Carol FrostSeptember 1, 2024 - 3:19 pm
I have made it through the Sealey Challenge, through 32 total books and out the other side of August (34 if you count Ravenna Press’s Triple as 3 chapbooks). I posted a photograph on Instagram of each cover with the day’s number, with the exception of this book. (For day 13, I posted another cover […]