Entries by Bethany

Two books by Lillo Way

LEND ME YOUR WINGS, Lillo Way, Shanti Arts Publishing, 2021. FLYING, TRAPEZE POEMS, Lillo Way, Redbird Chapbooks, 2024. Before Lisa Ashley invited me to read with her and Lillo Way, last fall at Eagle Harbor Books, I had heard of Lillo, but had not had the privilege of meeting her or reading her work. Lillo […]

The Gorgeous Nothings

Another book I’m reading—very, very slowly—is Emily Dickinson: The Gorgeous Nothings, compiled and edited by Marta Werner and Jen Bervin. (Christine Burgin / New Directions, 2013). The work of at least twenty years for the editors, these late fragments and drafts, scribbled on envelopes and the backs of letters, come to life in this edition, […]

poetry will save you

POETRY AS SURVIVAL, Gregory Orr, University of Georgia Press, 2002. In the depths of a blues my husband used to call “the Dempsey Dumpster,” I had a dream, or a fragment of dream that woke me in the winter dark, and this single line struck me and stuck with me, long after the details of […]

Kathleen Flenniken, DRESSING IN THE DARK

DRESSING IN THE DARK, Kathleen Flenniken, Lynx House Press, 2025. A new book of poems by Kathleen Flenniken is always a cause for rejoicing. The latest addition to the prestigious Pacific Northwest Poetry Series, edited by Linda Bierds, Dressing in the Dark is a paean to memory, loss, and survival. Flenniken has arranged thirty-nine poems […]