SOMETHING ABOUT LIVING, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha. The University of Akron Press, Akron, Ohio, 2024, 81 pages, paper, $16.95, https://www.uakron.edu/uapress/. Trying to keep this to a simple appreciation of a poem, and failing, especially with this startling and powerful collection. Something about Living won the 2024 National Book Award, and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha has a whole host […]
ELDER VOICES: WISTFUL, WONDERING, WISE, Editors Marie Eaton, Carla Shafer, and Angela Boyle. Elder Voices Project, Bellingham, Washington. This anthology collects poems and essays from elders living in Whatcom County, Washington. The launch featured six writers, ending with 100-year-old essayist, Maggie Weisberg, who charmed all of us by announcing, before reading “On Being Old,” that […]
I really would like to post 30 times about 30 different poets during National Poetry Month, but — let me admit up front — I’m lowering thresholds all over the place. Soon I’ll be lying inert in the doorway and you’ll have to step over me. But not today! Today, we get a poem from […]
HOW FIRE DESCENDS: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, Serhiy Zhadan. Translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 2023, 136 pages, paper, $18, yalebooks.yale.edu. I purchased this book last April, but have put off blogging about it because I would love to attempt to do it justice. A beautiful book, […]