"The poet s journey into the past and another culture, fired by eponymous inspiration, leads to discoveries, a new appreciation of lost moments. To bridge three centuries and create a verbal portrait though a picture is lacking is quite an achievement. Naturally, this effort will be compared to John Berryman s great poem about Anne Bradstreet, but to no harm."--David Ray
"In this fascinating sequence Penelope Scambly Schott poignantly re-imagines a devastating story in language that brings together the sensibilities of centuries distant in time but not, at their most intimate, in...
"The poet s journey into the past and another culture, fired by eponymous inspiration, leads to discoveries, a new appreciation of lost moments. To...
"Rafting Rise is a terrific book, the richly detailed evocation of an entire world, and an important contribution to the literature of the rural South."--Ted Kooser
"Rafting Rise has the strength of extended narrative and the quickness of lyric poetry. There is a haunting, visionary quality to Joe Survant's dramatic poem, bringing to life a world of log rafting and floodplain dwellers along the Rough and Green Rivers in 1916 and 1917. The sections are snapshots and ballads of witness, a counterpoint of voices that open a window on this long-ago time and place, of giant...
"Rafting Rise is a terrific book, the richly detailed evocation of an entire world, and an important contribution to the literature of the r...
"Perhaps Kahf's most impressive accomplishment is her ability to bring together beauty and pain in the same breath, to write poems that encompass history and human endurance as well as joy, that testify to the fragility and power of the human heart. . . . This is Kahf's ultimate message: that religion and ethnicity and color and nationality are as nothing in the face of simple humanity; that spirituality and life are beyond all of these, that no creed or ideology may be taken as justification for harm."--Lisa Suhair Majaj Kahf establishes herself as a new voice in the tradition of...
"Perhaps Kahf's most impressive accomplishment is her ability to bring together beauty and pain in the same breath, to write poems that encompass h...
"Mark Smith-Soto is brilliant at depicting moments from the past. . . . A poet with such passion and skill will be heard from again."--Judith Hemschemeyer
Our Lives Are Rivers traces the spiritual journey of the Costa Rican-American poet, an unabashed lover and celebrator of life. Taking its title from the Spaniard Jorge Manrique's most famous elegy, this collection is a meditation on time, memory, and the fleeting nature of life. Smith-Soto exercises the artist's prerogative to give shape to his experience, reaching beyond the merely autobiographical to explore the rich complexities...
"Mark Smith-Soto is brilliant at depicting moments from the past. . . . A poet with such passion and skill will be heard from again."--Judith Hemsc...
Kahf establishes herself as a new voice in the tradition of ethnic American poets, blending the experiences of recent Arab-American immigrants into contemporary American scenery. In her poems, Muslim ritual and Qur'anic vocabulary move in next door to the idiom of suburban Americana, and the legendary Scheherazad of the Thousand and One Nights shows up in New Jersey, recast as a sophisticated postcolonial feminist.
Kahf's carefully crafted poems do not speak only to important issues of ethnicity, gender, and religious diversity in America, but also to universal human themes of...
Kahf establishes herself as a new voice in the tradition of ethnic American poets, blending the experiences of recent Arab-American immigrants into...
