THE HALF-FINISHED HEAVEN: SELECTED POEMS, Tomas Tranströmer. Trans. Robert Bly. Graywolf Press, 250 Third Avenue North, Suite 600, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401, 2001, 2017, 118 pages, $16 paper, https://www.graywolfpress.org/. Tranströmer won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2011, and his influence is pervasive. But he is not merely a serious and learned poet, he is also wry and funny […]
TRASHCAN FUNERAL, Sage Curtis. dancing girl press & studio, Chicago, IL, 30 pages, $7 paper, http://www.dancinggirlpress.com/. Last October my friend Carla and I traveled to San Francisco and read our poetry at Sacred Grounds Cafe. The featured reader was Sage Curtis, whose poems (like her) are young, sexy, and full of great sounds. (The whole evening was […]
THE SCENE YOU SEE, Joannie Stangeland. Ravenna Press, PO Box 1166, Edmonds, WA 98020, 2018, 60 pages, $14.95 paper, http://ravennapress.com/. The Scene You See is Stangeland’s fourth poetry collection. It is luminous. Stangeland draws from the world of painting, capturing color and line (and texture and scent and…) and paying homage to numerous artists. (“Cast an eye for […]
ON PAPER WINGS, Donald Kentop. Rose Alley Press, 4204 Brooklyn Ave. NW, Seattle, WA 98015-5911, 2004, 44 pages, $6.95 paper, https://www.rosealleypress.com/. Donald Kentop loves traditional forms, sonnets and villanelles, rhyme and meter. Though he occasionally breaks into free verse, reading this entire, short book was a delight to the ear. For a story about more recent work, […]