“Marianne Boruch’s voice has always been a compelling one, crisp and a bit akilter. Her poems are approachable even as they tilt toward mystery. Unsentimental, they peer fearlessly into emotional life, their power enhanced by their author’s dry eye and acute vision. The natural world often is both setting and protagonist in her work, its …
Christine Deavel is a poet, a poetry bookseller and a consummate book recommender. Her versatile gift list offers suggestions for the artists, poets, toddlers and would-be surrealists on your list. Deavel’s debut collection of poetry, Woodnote, was the winner of the 2011 Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize. We interviewed her about the book here. When we asked …
“An elegant, sharp book that has been written out of grief but not overpowered by it. Think of this book alongside Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking or Joyce Carol Oates' A Widow's Story. The fact that buy generic viagra this is poetry not prose means that the narrative arrives in a more imagistic …
Carl Adamshick, a poet in Portland, won the prestigous Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets for his first book, Curses and Wishes, which was published earlier this year. His poems are spare, quietly intense, and quite moving, perhaps in part because they lack bombast. In a way his work resembles Raymond Carver’s …
Open Books co-owner Christine Deavel was interviewed on the blog for the National Book Critics Circle recently. She talks about her new collection of poetry, Woodnote, and she recommends a few books. We could listen to Deavel talk about books all day, but, we have to say, we prefer our interview with her. Woodnote was reviewed recently …
Christine Deavel’s first book, Woodnote, has just been published by Bear Star Press and has won the 2011 Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize. Author Rebecca Brown calls Deavel “a kind of Midwest nature mystic whose words call us to see what we see clearly and then to call the things we see by their true names.” …
“ ‘Well of course they’re staring, we’re very interesting,’ is the sweet epigraph, attributed to ‘my grandmother,’ for CAConrad’s collection, The Book of Frank (Wave Books). And, my, but all here is interesting; staring cannot be avoided. Through a seductively simple, innocent telling, Frank’s surreal world unfolds in compelling fashion: page-to-page we’re taken on a …
1. Ask an expert about a book of poems. Open Books: A Poem Emporium in Seattle is one of two poetry-only stores in the country, and these bookseller poets know their stuff. Let’s keep them busy this month. Call (206-633-0811) and ask for a recommendation from John or Christine based on a poet or poem you …
“Describing Pulitzer Prize-winner Rae Armantrout’s poetry means attempting to condense work that is already piano-wire taut . . . The relationship to song in her poetry is similar to that in a Thelonious Monk composition. Rhyme and rhythm are at work, very intelligent, unexpected, but the music is interior—to read her poetry is to overhear …
“To the extent that a life can have an agenda, my life’s agenda for a long time has included some sort of deliberative writing about the poetry of William Carlos Williams as a payment or at least an acknowledgement of a personal debt,” says poet, novelist and essayist Wendell Berry. The result is this absorbing volume, …
