Tag: microreview
-
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.…
-
microreview: Villainy by Andrea Abi-Karam
review by José Angel Araguz “Bodies fray at their limits. At their limits, they become indistinguishable.” Tiqqun This quote from Tiqqun “a French-Italian ultra-left anarchist philosophical journal or zine, produced in two issues from 1999 to 2001” is one of four quotes that open Andrea Abi-Karam‘s Villainy (Nightboat Books) and also the most telling one.…
-
microreview & interview: The Book of Mirrors by Yun Wang
review by José Angel Araguz Reading through The Book of Mirrors (Winner of the Twenty-Sixth White Pine Press Poetry Prize, 2021) by Yun Wang, I find myself marveling again and again at her facility with the poetic image. Across poems ranging in theme from feminism, dreams, literary figures, motherhood, and the universe, Wang’s use of…
-
microreview: Erica Hunt’s Jump the Clock
review by José Angel Araguz In a recent interview, poet and essayist Erica Hunt shared the following in response to a question about the best writing advice she’d ever received: From Rachel Blau DuPlessis in “Statement on Poetics”—paraphrasing now: A poem is “bottomless,” “intricate,” and “tangible” in detail. I like thinking this is true regardless…
-
microreview & interview: Radiant Obstacles by Luke Hankins
review by José Angel Araguz One of my favorite things about poetry is how it can not only detail an experience but also be an experience. The intimacy of language to be known and shared between us, to be changed and yet hold despite the changing, speaks to the human experience in a way that…
-
microreview & interview: Life, One Not Attached to Conditionals by Laura Cesarco Eglin
review by José Angel Araguz The idea of poetry as healing is one that is easily romanticized. This romanticizing comes often with an air of distance: poetry as balm after the fact of hurt. However, there is another facet to healing, one rawer and more immediate, that poetry can tap into. Poetry as stitches being…
-
microreview: Primitivity by Amy Sayre Baptista
review by José Angel Araguz The flash fiction sequence that makes up Primitivity (Black Lawrence Press) by Amy Sayre Baptista explores a Southern Gothic tradition of storytelling in pieces that are voice-driven and immersive. Using voice in a near-alchemical capacity, Baptista’s characters come to life through phrasing and presence. Take this short passage from the…
-
microreview: Word Has It by Ruth Danon
review by José Angel Araguz One of the things I admire about Ruth Danon’s Word Has It (Nirala Publications) is how the collection brings together via short lyrics and prose poem sequences a vibe of being a spy of language. I say “spy” and mean specifically a sensibility able to evoke the range of curiosity, intrigue,…
The Friday Influence 