Jun 22
first published at misfitmagazine.net John Pietaro, Innocent Postcards: poetry ciphers, verse, Roadside Press, distributed by Magical Jeep, also available on Amazon, 2024, 87 pages, $15 Moving back and forth throughout the Cold War years to the present, Pietaro’s unusual but affecting collection effectively renders a state of mind that was dominated by Cold War politics. I …
Jun 21
first published in misfitmagazine.net Todd Cirillo, Disposable Darlings, Roadside Press, distributed by Magical Jeep Distribution and available on Amazon, 2024, 84 pages, $15 Reading Cirillo put me in mind of working in the neighborhood bar and hanging out with the regulars. When I dedicate a book, as I often have, “to the regulars as they made life …
Jun 20
first published in misfitmagazine.net Dan Provost, All in a Pretty Little Row, Roadside Press, Magical Jeep Distribution, available on Amazon, 196 pages, 2023, $15 All in a Pretty Little Row, collects ten of Provost’s chapbooks published over the past 20 years. Some of these are rarely seen, extremely limited editions, so this recent trend by prolific poets to …
Jun 09
“… he clarified his intention, which was “beat” as beatific, as in “dark night of the soul,” or “cloud of unknowing,” the necessary beatness of darkness that proceeds opening up to light, egolessness, giving room for religious illumination.”—Allen Ginsberg In some ways, Gregory Corso represented a darkness within a darkness: a beat within the Beat. …
May 24
Ryan Quinn Flanagan’s These Many Cold Winters of the Heart begins with an epigraph from Emily Dickinson “I am out with lanterns looking for myself,” a perfect depiction of this collection. You will be riveted from the opening poem, “I Grew Up in a Brewery Town,” where the Molson plant closes down but “people survived, they usually …
Apr 20
Heather Dorn, How to Play House, Roadside Press, 2023, 116 pages $15 “Heather Dorn is a real mom with real life issues. She’s more Journal of a Mad Housewife than Kate Middleton, though she’s not a stuck at home mom going crazy with her kids but a PhD in English Literature who teaches at the …
Apr 14
In Ain’t These Sorrows Sweet, Lauren Scharhag invites readers into her hand, lifts us across space and time, and offers us the nourishment of memory cached in beans and light, in tomatoes and rosaries and barbacoa. She illuminates the crossroads of time and history and inheritance as they culminate in our own mouths and are …
Apr 10
Today, I finished reading Ain’t These Sorrows Sweet and what a journey we have been on, through dark places, wonderfully described: “Burned out encampments in railroad yards give no scent of myrrh.” This book contains beautiful, heart-wrenching narrative poems which it has been a tearstained pleasure to read. I realised that the book was a …
Apr 03
‘Innocent Postcards’: Progressive poetry reflects 20th-century politics and culture by Anthony Mangos, People’s World Author-poet-musician John Pietaro has been a constant, positive force in the ongoing progressive culture of New York City. Hailing from Brooklyn, Pietaro’s passions are equal parts literature, music, workers’ rights, and social activism. He founded the Dissident Arts and Brecht Lives! …
Mar 26
review of THESE ARE THE PEOPLE IN YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD by Jordan Trethewey, originally published in Miramichi Reader at https://miramichireader.ca/2024/03/these-are-the-people-in-your-neighbourhood-by-jordan-trethewey/ These Are the People In Your Neighbourhood by Jordan Trethewey March 25, 2024 by Mala Rai Jordan Trethewey’s tribute to the people of Fredericton, a city I have never been to, travelled nearly 5400km westward for a curious …
