Dispatches and Selections from Independent Publications
Maryann Corbett brings new life to this old wen, masterfully rendered in a new playful and pliable tone. One almost wants to welcome a wen into their armpit, if only to hear this rapturous movement repeated once again.
Ars Medica Vol. 16 Pg. 21 | Anonymous Author Translated by Maryann Corbett
Kerri Konopka’s Phoenix Redux is a lyrical renaissance painting. Put on your grave clothes and grab your spade. Descend into this spiritual ascension.
Joseph Harms is a poet of astronomical significance, and Ichor is no different. Harms is a master of syntax-jumbled, thesaurus-thumped, sublime absurdities, and yet it comes off so naturally… it’s as though Harms has learned to write in tongues.
Jay Deshpande recalls a youth of unity, loneliness, and the rasp of oceans in this tranquil and cordial meditation.
Rebekah Devine embarks on a divine metamorphosis mirroring that of the maddened Nebuchadnezzar. With a frightful rigor she narrates her transformation, one placated by aquiline cud and plagued by a fear of God.
Sergei Linkov’s graphic verse gives dissection an erotic spin. A troubling (but nevertheless enthralling) poem composed of classical allusions and necrophilic illusions.
Isabelle Baladine Howald is expertly translated by Elena Rivera in this agile, frantic, and beautifully fallible work of music; the voice of a mother protecting her young.
Trafika Europe | Isabelle Baladine Howald translated by Elena Rivera
Ian Cappelli reaves apart prose with a delicate touch, and reminds us that a fracture is simply a second mouth.
Michael Brookbank probes the abyss for peace in this exemplary work of psychological space travel.
Nicole Lachat memorializes the labors of her mother in this moving glimpse into the personal struggles of the working class.
Jayne Marek makes the reviewer pity a ferret, but is the ferret the true protagonist? And what is the poet hiding? Whatever the case may be, though the weasel may be artificial, the verse is filled with life.
Malo Gledhill has the “how in God’s name is this working?” charm of Robert Hass, and with an exorbitant amount of tact, composes this surreal magnum opus of nonsense, physics, dry hilarity and self-loathing.
In the spirit of a metafictional Borges novel within novel within prose poem, Bryan Price’s fiery Novel Against Realism inquires literature, mythology, theology, and morality through serious verse.
Tara Campbell’s verse turns every reader into her vessel, and instantly glues the reviewer to the page.
Maia Zelkha wants more Dilaudid, and I concur that she should be given more Dilauded, if only to write another poem about needing more Dilaudid, because I want more poems about wanting more Dilauded, because Zelkha’s poem about Dilauded deserves to be lauded, and reading it is becoming an addiction.
Diane Seuss opens this poem with a yearning for better ideas, but I must say, I don’t know how her poetry could get any better. Seuss is a gargantuan talent, and this poem is yet another testament to that fact.
This is a revelatory meditation, and is far better read than summarized, but let it be known that the road to Montana is paved with crosses, and Ian Powell-Palm has written this tremendous elegy for a mass grave.
Helena Mesa has turned the critic into a tourist, dumbfoundedly genuflecting at the foot of her verse. This poem is a holy place, let no one enter without first paying their respects.
Superlatives to Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino, Joseph F. Keppler, Jacqueline Winter Thomas, Coleman Stevenson and Andreea Iulia Scridon, and plaudits to the poets Mariam Shergelashvili (Digital Wind Mantra), Irene Koronas (NHC II, 5; XIII, 2; Brit. Lib. Or. 4926(1)) and Calvin Olsen (translating João Luís Barreto Guimarães’ “Petals Overhead”) just to name a few. A fantastic publication with no shortage of fantastic poets, eratio has earned two more dedicated readers.
eratio | Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino, Joseph F. Keppler, Jacqueline Winter Thomas, Coleman Stevenson and Andreea Iulia Scridon
Babo Kamel masterfully unites nature and personal strife, pitying the trees as she weaves these “provocative threads” into quite an exhilarating read.
There will be only sighs of contentment after reading the brisk and buoyant verse of Chloe Martinez. This poem should not be left unlauded, but should be turned over for all the world to see.
Nothing is lost in translation in this medium bending masterwork of prose poetry. Chirico is done proud as John Bradley weaves from his painting a magnificent canvas of words.
Liam McLean orchestrates chaos with unbelievable, intoxicating precision. Bertilax Trax must be read, absorbed, subsumed. Waste no more time. Go, embark on the journey.
The title is an accurate description of this poem’s effect. John Amen leaves the reader breathless with this immortal elegy.
Cleo Muller has written the youngest, blondest, and prettiest poem I’ve read all week. Come, step into the ring and ride the bull.
Nicole Liu kisses her knuckles and punches straight through the page in this punk rock masterpiece.
Jealousy leapt from my lips when I first read this poem. The rabid eroticism, suppurating love! Laura Post has taken a pile of dirt and constructed Sodom, a torrid city, intoxicating in all its decay.
Natalie Homer did not hold back when crafting this tour de force, and while she may skip ahead, the reader is left clinging to every word.
Janet Bowdan has surely dropped a gem into the world of internet e-mags, and her verse has not passed me by without leaving quite an unforgettable impression.
Robert Fanning’s Unspeakable has left me utterly speechless. With the chaotic finesse of e.e. Cummings, the imagination of Breton, the imagery of a sprawling Dali, this poem indeed has it all.
Berryman would not be ashamed of having his face on this project. Kelvin Corcoran’s impeccable orchestra of images is worthy of a legendary name to match, and one can’t help but feel they’re playing spoons beside Corcoran’s virtuosic banjo solo.
Though David Atkinson writes of the language of fists, he does so with the elegance of Ali’s butterfly. And while I must refuse his offer to take up a glove, I tip my hat to the poet’s talents, which have left me punch drunk with praise and tipsy with hat-tipping.
Mikhail Kalinin’s song of songs immerses the reader in a rustic Moscow autumn. Masterfully translated by Konstantin Kulakov and Anton Relin, one can almost bite the apples and taste the wines.
Pocket Samovar | Mikhail Kalinin translated by Konstantin Kulakov and Anton Relin
D. Parker (or by the end of her poem, perhaps merely Parker) has made exemplary music from this gruesome mutilation.
Frederick Pollack brings an aging Cléo de Mérode to life in this masterful rending of the fallen belle. The death of a beautiful woman is perhaps literature’s most predictable platitude, but a renowned beauty reduced to an affluent, neurotic raisin? That is virgin soil, ladies and gentleman, and Pollack does not disappoint.
Dave Richards’ Three Dreams is a spiritual awakening. Indeed like a dream, the reader traverses an eternity of images in what is less than a minutes read.
Anon Baisch’s Forgetting Sonnets invokes a spirit akin to the notes of Ernest Fenollosa; controlled chaos and abstractions rubbed raw. “Crippled white crippled forgetting.” : : “Raise cup quench sorrow sorrow again sorry.”
With his apologies making for such fantastic verse, I must forgive David Flynn his trespasses, and encourage any further threats of pedicide.
Farley Egan Green has weaved a perfect prose poem from the skeins of loss, and his words are more than worthy of immortality.
Time’s Arrow is a Beautiful, learned, pedagogical resource at its finest, and using the best of printing press as available today to sift chronologically through centuries of verse. This should be a resource known everywhere.
Ed Steck pursuance of the God Within in MycoMountaineer from At The Mountains of the Mycoverse is Entheogenic Heroic Poem traversing McKennaverse, “a moment in patterns” enfolding the molecule with the ethereal. Let new pathways unfold.
Asphalte Magazine | Ed Steck
Matthew Moore’s translation of the late Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun is a testament to the talents of both. Moore has brought an exceptional tact to his translation, and has demonstrated both himself and Šalamun as brilliant poets.
Asphalte Magazine | Tomaž Šalamun translated by Matthew Moore
Victoria Woolf Bailey’s Last Gasp is not your normal elegy, but instead illustrates perfectly the chasmic renewal of loss, and how life must resume in the wake of death, whether one is ready or not.
Christina Buckton’s syntax twisting folk tale is an addictive read, a horrifying act of hilarity with imagery to make her contemporaries blush. Buckton is in a league of her own, and poems like this one deserve to be exhumed from the unmarked graves of obscurity.
Superlatives to Roger Bloor, Vanessa Lampert, and Mary Mullholland, editors of The Alchemy Spoon, Issue 5: Unthemed, with excellent contributions from Sarah E Mnatzgen (“Gaugin Girls”), Victoria Woolf Bailey (“Last Gasp”), and Christina Buckton (“Belinda”). And all around consensus favorite of Cruellest Month.
Roger Bloor, Vanessa Lampert, and Mary Mullholland | The Alchemy Spoon
Martha Webster’s Lemon Tree is a wonderful lesson in mixology. With an intoxicating rhythm, a fine pinch of grit, and a just a flicker of angst, the poet has created something truly masterful.
Natalie Wang recounts her childhood with a visceral uncanniness, and manages to be vulnerable while avoiding histrionics, navigating the confessional with a notable restraint. Her descriptions of insects leave the reviewer reaching for his can of Raid while simultaneously reveling in this poem’s merits.
Julia Shipley is whimsical, puckish, hilarious, and bizarre. Whatever she’s trying to say, it keeps the reader reeling at every turn of phrase, unsure of whether to cackle or dial 911.
Writing a villanelle is hard enough, but writing a good villanelle is a rare feat, especially when anything written in the scheme must stand alongside some of the most iconic poems in the English canon. Cheyenne Taylor’s The Importance of Small Suffering is a fresh and poignant take on the classic form, and her images conjure a horrid past, one glowing with wisdom and twisted at the whims of her eloquence.
Ruth Towne’s Return to Sender is a harrowing portrait of unrequited love, or loneliness, or neglect, or death, or stamp prices. Whatever the theme may be, Towne has written one of my favorite poem’s of 2022, and should be on the radar of every serious reader.