A Review of Rajiv Mohabir's Antiman: A Hybrid Memoir, by Shankar Narayan

Uncovering hidden histories and languages buried in the rubble of colonialism is just one of the many wonders of Antiman: A Hybrid Memoir, Rajiv Mohabir’s new memoir, which, like its author, is a beautifully hybrid creation that defies convention and categorization. Through interwoven language that’s part poetry and part prose, part witness and part myth, we are invited into Mohabir’s journey—fleeing the racism and homophobia of semi-rural Florida, studying Hindi and searching for roots in Varanasi and Bihar, teaching Latinx students in New York City while seeking connection with South Asian progressives and queers.

No Sorting Grief: A Review of Lily is Leaving by Frances McCue

Thankfully, we have Lily is Leaving, Leslie Fried’s first poetry collection. The book displays an authentic and generous submersion into grief, personal history, shared tragedy and longing. Fried, who is Steven Jesse Bernstein’s widow (Bernstein was the poet, punk rock hero and spoken word performer before there was spoken word who died by his own hand thirty years ago this year), began her own arts career as a set designer. For thirty years, she worked in plaster and paint depicting scenery for film and theater. She came to poetry later, after her life with Bernstein, and she took to it with both humility and gusto, taking courses at Hugo House, reaching out to other writers and editors, and going back and back to her verse, recalibrating it.

Larry Crist reviews The Madrona Project Vol. I: A Festschrift for Clemens Starck

A Festschrift for Clemens Starck is a wonderful tribute and introduction to this long under-recognized poet and craftsman, and I’m looking forward to tracking down more of his work in the near future.

Matt Briggs reviews Polly Buckingham's the river people

Public spaces are populated and hardly empty but somehow the people who live here are not on trend, not counted, as if they are not visible while they shop in the forgotten chain store or drive along the abandoned highway.

Mike Dillon reviews Ron Chew's MY UNFORGOTTEN SEATTLE

But the narrative of any life, especially of the shy, cannot fully capture the interior drama between the contemplative observer and the public figure. That drama, a sort of Proustian, pilgrim’s progress, is the undertow that moves through Chew’s life and makes My Unforgotten Seattle, ultimately, moving.

Thomas Hubbard reviews Frank Rossini's "last confession"

What you notice in the world around you may change after you read Rossini's Last Confession, a poetic overview of what has happened around him in four stages of his life.

book reviewsPhoebe BoscheApril 22, 2021raven chronicles, Frank Rossini, poetry, last confession, Oregon poetsComment

Christopher J. Jarmick Reviews Hold Fast by Holly J. Hughes

Phoebe BoscheApril 1, 2021

Michael Daley reviews HOLY MAGIC by Priscilla Long

Michael Daley reviews HOLY MAGIC by Priscilla Long, winner of the 2020 Sally Albiso Poetry Book Award.

book reviews, PoetryPhoebe BoscheDecember 26, 2020Michael Daley, Priscilla Long, moonpath press

Jerry Martien reviews “The Blossoms Are Ghosts at The Wedding” by Tom Jay

The new collection of Tom Jay’s writing tells us there’s more to his work than we saw in the poems and essays of a dozen years ago. But only a little of that is more recent—instead the book goes back, wider and deeper. To the text it adds context, essential to our understanding of “bioregional” or “place-based” writing. Here it means a half century of life and community on the eastern slope of the Olympic Peninsula.

Sarah SalcedoApril 17, 2020

Donna Miscolta reviews "Take a Stand, Art Against Hate Anthology"

“Arriving in time for this election season is a vital anthology of poems, stories, and art from Raven Chronicles that directly responds to the hatred inflamed by the racist, incompetent, narcissist currently munching “hamberders” and tweeting twaddle from the Oval Office while crises rage. I spoke to Anna Bálint, one of the editors of Take a Stand: Art Against Hate about the inspiration, or perhaps provocation, for compiling the anthology. “

James Bertolino reviews Carmen Germain’s “The Old Refusals”

This is a wide-ranging and richly-endowed collection of poems. Every poem in this book has unforgettable lines.

book reviewsSarah SalcedoDecember 3, 2019James Bertolino, Carmen Germain, the old refusals, raven chronicles

Corrina Wycoff Reviews Crysta Casey’s “Rules for Walking Out”

Rules for Walking Out—Crysta Casey’s second posthumously released poetry collection—chronicles Casey’s life during and after military service. Her poems stretch from the Parris Island boot camp where her enlistment began in 1978, to the Seattle Veteran’s Hospital where her life ended thirty years later. She rarely editorializes. Instead, with journalistic distance, Casey juxtaposes her experiences, revealing their complexity, and creating a deeply authentic, poignant memoir in verse.

Thomas Hubbard reviews Jed Myers' "Watching the Perseids"

My stepfather wept often during Mum’s last year. Fear and shock shone from way back in her eyes, behind the blank stare. Her knowledge of who and where she was had already left. Dementia had stolen her brain, and after a final year of total helplessness, she passed — Mom was gone and it was finished. Dementia took her away from us, then killed her, and her long dying deeply scarred both my stepfather and myself.

If only Jed Myers’ book, Watching the Perseids, could have come fifteen years ago, the pain could have been far more bearable.

book reviewsSarah SalcedoJune 25, 2016thomas hubbard, Watching the Perseids, jed myers, book reviews

Thomas Hubbard reviews Jeanetta C. Mish's "What I Learned at the War"

As a child who spent countless days in company of a river — swimming, catching crawdads, fishing, trapping muskrats, hunting rabbits — I learned how to cut small, tinder-dry grapevine twigs and smoke them like cigarettes, exhaling the mild smoke to drive away clouds of river gnats. And so when I opened Jeanetta Calhoun Mish’s What I Learned at the War for the first time and read the lede stanza of her “Pastoral for My Brother,” I was immediately hooked. She wrote,

Today, I remember
prowling the woods with you
smashing wild grapes
into our haunted mouths,
smoking the vines.

Reading on, I discovered a writer whose work evokes the America that birthed “new” southerners, urban mixed-blood NDNs, midwest greasers, and the legions of lost travelers who, like Kerouac in the fifties, cross the continent endlessly, searching for their lives. This collection of poems displays a distinctive attitude, established most succinctly in the poem, “Sometimes there was an armistice.”

Thomas Hubbard reviews Chris Jarmick's NOT ALOUD

Do you read or write poetry in Seattle? Have you ever read or written poetry in Seattle? Columbia City? Kirkland? Are you familiar with the term, Poem Starter? You do? You have? You are?

Then you must know Chris Jarmick.

Book Reviews