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April 27, 2023/0 Comments/by Bethany

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WE HAD OUR REASONS, Ricardo RuizNovember 23, 2024 - 1:57 am
Business as usual seems beyond me right now, and I’m daily amazed by the advertisements that make their way into my email-inbox—including from writers merrily chirping about new classes and life changing strategies for writing “your next best-seller!” But here’s me. Dropping some of my 2024 goals, downsizing from the usual blog reviews, but still […]
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 […]

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