Category Archives: Reviews

“Not Satisfaction, but Its Proxies”: Javen Tanner’s Curses For Your Sake

Anthology Poet Highlight 10/82: Javen Tanner, Curses For Your Sake “The title of Tanner’s chapbook frames well the experience captured in his lyric narrative poems. Extracted from the decree God directed towards Adam and Eve at the moment he expelled them from the Garden of Eden, the phrase ‘curses for your sake’ (see Gen. 3:17) suggests that moral paradox and… Read more »

On Karen Kelsay’s In Spite of Her

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Anthology Poet Highlight 9/82: Karen Kelsay, In Spite of Her In her chapbook of narrative poems, In Spite of Her, Karen explores the relationship between a middle-aged woman and a world that changes and moves on “in spite of her” (“In Spite of Her,” line 11). These poems become acts of mourning mixed with moments of acceptance of and resignation… Read more »

“How We are Saved” in/by Neil Aitken’s Lost Country of Sight

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Anthology Poet Highlight 4/82: Neil Aitken, The Lost Country of Sight Neil’s first collection begins with a poem—“In the Long Dream of Exile” (hear Neil read it below)—that marks the solitary nature of the poet’s vocation. Pointing to this call to wander rhetorical landscapes in pursuit of, among other things, what poet Adrienne Rich calls “the dream of a common… Read more »