Reviews

We’ve Been Warned by Liz Ziemska
Highwire Act & Other Tales of Survival
JoeAnn Hart
Black Lawrence Press
175 pages
In Highwire Act & Other Tales of Survival by Hudson Prize winner JoeAnn Hart, we have eighteen charming and devastating stories about the greatest horror of our time: global extinction and annihilation due to climate change. Hart’s keen eye and nimble voice explores eco-terror/climate anxiety through a myriad of grounded, deeply human permutations. Some stories are more successfully executed than others, but overall, the collections sings.
The Environmental Revolution is Us by Carrie Nassif
I’d Rather Be Lightning
By Nancy Lynee Woo
Gasher Press
pp. 128
Nancy Lynee Woo has reduced the ratio of aching beauty, as compared to impending doom, down to the least common denominator and it is us.
A Journey Without Definite Answers by Carlene Gadapee
On the Road to Lviv
By Christopher Merrill, translated by Nina Murray
Arrowsmith Press 2023
103 pp.
Christopher Merrill’s On the Road to Lviv follows the architecture of the epic. He introduces individual voices that represent various viewpoints, and he embeds history and public figures from both centuries and decades past and from contemporary times as well. In this way, the reader is a witness to present-day events unfolding as a continuation of geographic and generational hostility in the setting of Eastern Europe.
Consider the Brain by Les Schofield
Learning and Teaching Creativity
By Dan Hunter
Radio Ranch Press
296 pages
In his new book, Learning and Teaching Creativity, Dan Hunter invites us to take our brains out and play with them from the inside out. It is a masterful guide in learning how these “thingies” work. Every page in this inspirational handbook is a passionate exposition of the enabling connection between a teacher’s curiosity-fueled imagination and their students’ ability to learn to grow theirs. Citing current neuroscience, credible exemplars, and his work with students, Hunter interweaves his assertions with practical exercises that help us experience the delight in imaginative growth.
A Penetrating Light by Jonathan Everitt
A penetrating light
Valediction | poems and prose by Linda Parsons
Madville Publishing
79 pages
Linda Parsons’ Valediction takes full advantage of all the qualities and connotations light casts upon our world. The warm glow of a blaze, of autumn, of human radiance, and of life coming to an end.
Combat Barbie by M.C. Armstrong
The Fine Art of Camouflage
By Lauren Kay Johnson
MilSpeak Books, 2023
254 pages
In The Fine Art of Camouflage, Lauren Kay Johnson refers several times to Greg Mortenson’s 2007 best-seller, Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations . . . One School at a Time. This intertextuality shines a sharp light on the unvarnished Afghanistan Johnson reveals in her fantastic new memoir.
Poems of Planting—and Burial by Jonathan Everitt
Tamp
By Denton Loving
Mercer University Press
62 pages
When a poet invites you on an intimate tour of his native Appalachian countryside: Go. Such is the invitation Denton Loving extends to us with Tamp, his bittersweet, atmospheric second collection.
On Ancestors and Ethnic Biases by Carlene Gadapee
Tender Machines
By J. Mae Barizo
Tupelo Press
68 pp.
What must we do? What do societal norms expect of women, and of all of us? And if we reject these circumscribed norms, what are the alternatives?
A Tale of an Unexpected Twin by Les Schofield
When We Were Twins
By Danuta Hinc
Plamen Press
232 pages
Good novelists write stories for readers to be heartily entertained. Exceptional novelists write stories for readers to become deeply thoughtful witnesses.
The Ocean of Story by Shannon Reed
Flash Fiction America:
73 Very Short Stories
by James Thomas (Editor), Sherrie Flick (Editor), John Dufresne (Editor, Florida International University)
W.W. Norton
304 pages
If a novel is a deep dive down into the ocean of story, flash fiction is often a jump into a swimming hole: short, sharp, brisk, done. Even when engulfed, you can see the pond walls and river banks. The water might be warm, or cold, or filled with life. You might even touch bottom.
[Take immortality, God, but give] by Dmitry Bliznyk
And our land is decorated with bloodied fragments of cement walls.
The Fourth Month of Constant Shelling by Lyudmyla Khersonska
It’s so hard to live when they’re killing you.
Walking the Ojibwe Path, Review by Ruth Edgett
Walking the Ojibwe Path:
A Memoir in Letters to Joshua
Richard Wagamese
Milkweed Editions, 2023
Doubleday Canada, 2002
205 pages
A heart, once shattered, can never heal back to its original shape. Always, there will be lesions and scars that keep it from beating exactly as it once did. Still, with care and gentle nurturing, a heart can re-form stronger, more polished and faceted than before its breaking.
BookEnds: Elizabeth Reed & Ann Bookman
BookEnds: Elizabeth Reed and Ann Bookman
“I stood before the mirror in my parent’s bedroom, admiring my grownup look, unaware whose shoes I walked in.”
Field Notes: An Uneasy Legacy by Elizabeth Reed
An Uneasy Legacy
She’s paddling a canoe among lily pads when her grandmother’s heirloom ivory comb falls into the muddy water.