(Originally appeared in December 2013)
Christina Davis’s Forth a Raven offers stark, textured, intelligent and lyrical pieces in a stripped-down yet ultimately complex, reflective language. Encompassing the tension of different realms – the spiritual and the secular, the extraordinary and the mundane, her work, quite simply, astounds. Read this book. Seek out her work. It’s sublime.
Bluets by Maggie Nelson
Neither poetry nor prose, existing between but transforming both, Maggie Nelson’s Bluets astounds in its generosity of detail, insight and compelling language. Love, injury, art, failure, truth, loneliness, sex and the color blue in all its shades and moods permeate this work. Read it now. You have waited long enough!
Published by Wave Books: http://www.wavepoetry.com/
Another review of If Your Matter Could Reform is up on GoodReads, as well as on the reviewer’s blog:
https://jaffalogue.wordpress.com/2015/04/11/review-if-your-matter-could-reform/
And of course the print version has now been released:
With shipping, to U.S. addresses, the total should be $6.00. The shipping to international addresses will, I’d imagine, vary.
Leigh Ward-Smith has been kind enough to post a review of my chapbook on her site, Leigh’s Wordsmithery: https://leighswordsmithery.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/poetry-review-robert-okaji-if-your-matter-could-reform/
Tung-Hui Hu’s Greenhouses, Lighthouses highlights lyrical precision in poems that bounce between such diverse launching points as photographic sequences, Euripedes, union slogans, woodcuts and even an historical seaman’s guide. His language placates and challenges, whispers, cajoles and insinuates, and overflows with layered possibilities and nuance. You must read his work.
Christina Davis’s Forth a Raven offers stark, textured, intelligent and lyrical pieces in a stripped-down yet ultimately complex, reflective language. Encompassing the tension of different realms – the spiritual and the secular, the extraordinary and the mundane, her work, quite simply, astounds. Read this book. Seek out her work. It’s sublime.
