When I Was Straight is a brief (42 pages) poetry collection by Julie Marie Wade. It is split into two sections: “Before.”, in which all the poems are titled “When I Was Straight” and “After.”, which are titled “When ___ Learns I am a Lesbian”. Because the first half of the collection has theRead More
Danika reviews Living as a Lesbian by Cheryl Clarke
Living as a Lesbian is a poetry collection that was first published in 1986, and has been recently republished with notes, reviews, a preface and introduction. I feel like there are several ways to read this book. It comes with notes at the end that reference certain poems, so you can flip back andRead More
Danika reviews Sisterhood by Julie R. Enszer
Poetry is usually pretty hit or miss for me. There are definitely poets that I am huge fans of, but I usually get impatient with more abstract, surreal poetry. So I went into reading Sisterhood with some trepidation. Luckily, I was completely wrong to be worried. This is a beautiful collection, with poems that made me stopRead More
Tag reviews 25 Years of Malcontent by Stephanie Byrd
For November I reviewed the follow-up collection by Byrd, A Distant Footstep on the Plain. I’m doing it a little backwards this time by reviewing her first collection second, but it’s for a reason. 25 Years of Malcontent is, like its successor, raw and painfully real, but some of the works in this collection (e.g. “Mother’sRead More
Tag reviews A Distant Footstep On the Plain by Stephanie Byrd
A Distant Footstep on the Plain is a collection of poetry at its finest, its most ragged and painful, and its most hopeful. The primary focus is on things that personally affect Byrd: racism, classism, poverty, and relationships with women. Byrd doesn’t hold back at all whether she’s writing about the experience of racism (“so IRead More
Danika reviews Word Hot by Mary Meriam
Word Hot is comprised of 22 short poems, each less than a page long. The book is divided into two sections: To Lillian and Muse of Two, though I couldn’t quite figure out the commonalities within each section that caused them to be grouped that way. There is an ongoing theme of unrequited or lost loveRead More
Laura reviews “Wine For A Shotgun” by Marty McConnell
Wine For A Shotgun by Marty McConnell is the most beautiful collection of poetry I’ve ever read. Now, a caveat: I say this as a reader of fiction who is generally interested in — but hasn’t read read an awful lot of — poetry. Like Danika, I often don’t feel feel qualified to write aboutRead More
Danika reviews Riot Lung by Leah Horlick
As I have mentioned before, I get a little overwhelmed trying to review poetry. It seems so individual, and what expertise do I have? Of course, that’s equally true of fiction, and I don’t seem to mind reviewing that, so I’ll give it a shot! Riot Lung is very scenic, firmly rooted in Horlick’s prairie home.Read More
Danika reviews the Queer issue of Poetry Is Dead
I have troubles reviewing poetry collections because I never really feel qualified. And some of the poetry included in Poetry Is Dead (Issues 2, Volume 3) didn’t help with that: one is entitled “Perfect Lovers (Gay Porn Story Removed (O’s Remain)), which is just two pages of the letter o with spaces between them. Another,Read More
Laura reviews Sister Spit edited by Michelle Tea
In the introduction to Sister Spit: Writing, Rants & Reminiscence from the Road, editor Michelle Tea proudly writes that Sister Spit is what she did instead of college. Reading this collection is like digging through a pile of her study group’s crumpled looseleaf notes at the end of the semester. It’s enough to get theRead More