-
microreview: Dear Outsiders by Jenny Sadre-Orafai
review by José Angel Araguz One of the first clues into the framing narrative of Dear Outsiders by Jenny Sadre-Orafai comes straight from its stunning cover. This image of two people blending into one only to reveal the sea, one learns through reading, works to evoke the experience of the two siblings who serve as…
-
microreview: night mode by Caelan Ernest
review by José Angel Araguz Reading through Caelan Ernest’s night mode (Everybody Press) I kept coming back to the idea of movement. There’s the movement of words across the page, the page here treated less like a field and more like a smartphone screen where text placement and white space engage the eye on a…
-
poet as instagram photo dump
There’s this practice on Instagram where people do a “photo dump” which has them sharing a random hodgepodge of recent pics. Please consider this post as a blog version of that. Am slowly relearning my voice here. More reviews coming, and other things as well 🙂 The influence here, at least for this post, is…
-
writer feature: Amanda Galvan Huynh
This week I’d like to celebrate the debut poetry collection of stellar poet and friend, Amanda Galvan Huynh: Where My Umbilical Is Buried (Sundress Publications). I’ve admired Galvan Huynh’s work on and off the page for some time now. She’s a committed Xicana educator as well as an editor, alongside Luisa A. Igloria, of the essay…
-
microreview: La Movida by Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta
review by José Angel Araguz In my research (read: Googling) as I spent time with La Movida by Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta (Nightboat Books) I came across the following lines shared by more than one Tumblr account: There’s a weapon I wishI could wieldwhen I feel the vomit of your gazehit the side of my face.I want…
-
microreview: like everything else we loved by sarah a. chavez
review by José Angel Araguz Early on in like everything else we loved by Sarah A. Chavez, a micro chapbook published by Porkbelly Press, the reader is presented a scene in which the speaker describes a hole where the city has uprooted a tree as follows: Like losing you, the loss of the treewas quick.…
-
dispatch 021023
Had the opportunity to share one of Paul Hlava Ceballos’ poems at a reading this week. The poem, “Coronary Angiogram,”* is a fascinating prose poem whose turns of phrase move between two different languages of the heart: the medical and the personal. There’s also a nod to history and craft in the second stanza: “At…
-
Grolier hybrid reading this Thursday!
Just a quick post to share that I’ll be doing a hybrid event this week! WHAT: Grolier Poetry Book Shop presents José Angel Araguz & Levi Rubeck (hybrid reading)WHEN: Thursday, February 9th, 2023WHERE: This event will take place synchronously via Zoom and instore at 6 Plympton Street. Registration is required.REGISTRATION (ONLINE): Use this link to…
-
dispatch 011223
Happy new year, y’all! The theme so far for 2023 seems to be difficulty: sometimes intense, sometimes fruitful, but always engaging. Like a poem. With this riff in mind, I’d like to give a shout-out to Sasha Pimental’s “If I Die in Juárez,” a poem that approaches difficult subject matter in an unexpected way. Been…
-
Follow
Following
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
The Friday Influence 