review first published in misfitmagazine.net, Issue No. 37, Winter 2024 Westley Heine, Street Corner Spirits: poems and flash fiction, Roadside Press, available from www.magicaljeep.com or your favorite online retailer, 2023, 146 pages, $15 Street Corner Spirits is the second Roadside Press publication for Heine following his novel about trying to make his way as a …
Tag: review
Dec 31
Review by Alan Catlin: Born on Good Friday by Nathan Graziano
Nathan Graziano, Born on Good Friday, Roadside Press, available at www.magicaljeep.com 2023, 80 pages, $15 I was reading the recent anthology from Nerve Cowboy: Selected Works 1996-2004 ( a best of the early years of long running print poetry zine) that featured four poems of Graziano’s from that era, reminding me how long I had …
Dec 20
Review by J. Nishida: And Blackberries Grew Wild by Susan Ward Mickelberry
Susan Ward Mickelberry’s poetry presents a “microcosm of body”—an intimacy of sensory experience found in whippoorwills and windows, fish bones and raspberries, mosquitos and moss, blood and thorns, a standard sink, a red tricycle. But this intimacy of detail, along with gentle rhythms of Mickelberry’s narrative voice, cannot distract from the sheer breadth of content …
Dec 18
Review by Michael Hollywood: Street Corner Spirits by Westley Heine
One gloomy spring afternoon at the age of 13 I was feeling bored and restless, sitting at home roiling in adolescent malcontent, when I happened to pick up my brother’s copy of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island Of The Mind. I was instantly transfixed by the playfulness and whimsy combined with hard bitten cynicism. Here …
Dec 10
Review by E. Lynn Alexander: They Said I Wasn’t College Material by Scot Young
“They Said I Wasn’t College Material by Scot Young is a collection that spans time and circumstances, by a poet willing to resurrect the sting of assumptions and expectations to turn the lens in the other direction. He challenges social gatekeeping, and the classist label culture that nurtures the privileged and pushes the rest of …
Oct 17
Review by David Alec Knight: The Dead and the Desperate by Dan Denton
If you have liked Dan Denton’s poetry, or if you liked his first novel, you know what you’re in for. And guess what? There’s even more now: he has grown much as a writer since, and this novel is even more important. You might think, as you begin to read Dan Denton’s THE DEAD AND …
Oct 10
Review by Westley Heine: The Dead and the Desperate by Dan Denton
The Beats and later Charles Bukoswki cleared the way for the working class poet, the outlaw writer, and the mental outsider to enter literature. After Buk died in 1994 no one has really replaced his mantle. In the vacuum has swelled a generation of writers who seem to think if they get drunk and write …
Oct 05
Review by Susan Ward Mickelberry: Nothing and Too Much to Talk About by Nancy Patrice Davenport
I read this poem “After a Miracle” and a few others this week at Poetry Jam at the Civic Media Center from Nothing And Too Much To Talk About by Nancy Patrice Davenport, published by Roadside Press / Michele McDannold As I began to read the poems I was initially delighted, then excited. I really …
Sep 25
Review by Independent Book Review: The Dead and the Desperate by Dan Denton
The Dead and the Desperate By Dan Denton Genre: Literary Fiction Reviewed by Maxwell Gillmer, Independent Book Review Beautifully written and utterly raw—a harrowing look at the life of an American factory worker There is no title more fitting for Dan Denton’s third book than The Dead and the Desperate. The story is borne of …
Sep 11
Review by Scot D. Young: Born on Good Friday by Nathan Graziano
In Nathan Graziano’s latest book, Born on Good Friday from Roadside Press, the poet tells the story of a good Catholic boy’s coming of age that develops into a 40 year story that most of us can relate to. He checks all the boxes growing up and eventually leaves the confessional behind. Graziano’s book reads …
