Snapshots
A quick look at the poetry world beyond CV2.
Critiques
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Review: The Only Card in a Deck of Knives by Lauren Turner Lauren Turner’s debut poetry collection, The Only Card in a Deck of Knives, was not meant to be published during a global pandemic and yet it is hard to imagine a better balm for this moment. Despite its stark focus on death, violence, and trauma, Turner’s ...
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Review: THE TRUTH IS TOLD BETTER THIS WAY by Liz Worth ON ERECTIONS AND BANISHINGS My flight is delayed. I am sitting in the Detroit Metro airport with The Truth is Told Better This Way, Liz Worth’s second collection of poems. I have a baculum with me—a gift from another writer—a reminder of things more profane, ...
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Review: Throwing the Diamond Hitch by Emily Ursuliak Emily Ursuliak’s first book of poetry, Throwing the Diamond Hitch, contributes to the Canadian road trip genre with a story full of gusto and verve. The book chronicles an actual trip in the Summer of 1951 by Ursuliak’s grandmother and a friend, as they ...
- Shades of Grey: Three Recent Books of Poetry Xiphoid Process by Kevin Connolly House of Anansi Press, 2017 88 pp.; $19.95 (paperback) Octopus by Patrick Warner Biblioasis, 2016 64 pp.; $18.95 (paperback) The Duende of Tetherball by Tim Bowling Nightwood Editions, 2016 96 pp.; $18.95 (paperback) Xiphoid Process takes its title from a strange but ...
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Review: Beautiful Children with Pet Foxes by Jennifer LoveGrove LoveGrove’s greatest accomplishment in the work is the deft blending of the horrifically specific — the details of things gone wrong and the inevitable, self-preserving drawing inwards that accompanies trauma and innocence’s end — with the general wistful ...
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Review: The Description of the World by Johanna Skibsrud Skibsrud’s poetry is most compelling when the language is concrete rather than abstract. For example, the startling poem “They Will Take My Island” is a narration of the dismantling of the self, a process that begins with the narrator’s ocean surroundings and ...
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Review: Ekke by Klara du Plessis
Therefore Therein All There Is Is There: A Review of Klara du Plessis’ EkkeEkke is a patient book, despite the urgency of its contents, and a helpful1 book, despite the importance of the difficulty its demonstrations pose. Its opening poem (“First of all ... -
Review: Saint Twin by Sarah Burgoyne Through its adept use of the technique of bricolage and Oulipian-like language games, Sarah Burgoyne’s first poetry collection, Saint Twin, tackles themes of personal loss, spirituality, and the quest to make sense out of the absurdity of human existence. ...
- from Daily Meditations As a little boy who had no connection to his history or culture, his language or stories, his homelands and to the bones of his ancestors buried there, I was given an incredible and life-altering gift. My late Aunty Georgina. Through her I was brought home. I was brought back to my history, my culture, my language, my ...
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Review: Dysphoria by Shane Neilson Shane Neilson’s Dysphoria formally represents the titular disorder, dysphoria—a deep sense of unease with one’s self or one’s body—by displacing the traditional couplet form within the structure of the poems, producing internal rhymes that are regular but ...
