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"...these are the kinds of books that sell at poetry readings and connect readers to writers who do the good work of small press publishing. For that, Finishing Line Press should be commended."
--Michael Anthony Bradshaw, American Book Review ` Praise for American Gothic, Take 2 by Maria Terrone The evil of banality lurks “like ax murderers” in a recycled cardboard takeout cup, in “Muzak . . . stuck on hiss,” on a spouse’s computer as “his eyes read the monitor / like a love letter,” and in a series of phone messages “lying in wait / on your bedside phone.” Maria Terrone wrestles this insidious spirit into the light in her new chapbook, American Gothic, Take 2....As other personae do here, she manages to redeem violent or violated language through the whimsical humor that also animates Terrone’s earlier collections—The Bodies We Were Loaned (Word Works, 2002) and A Secret Room in Fall (Ashland Poetry Press, 2006). Whereas the humor of those earlier books blunts the force of concussive loss, here it soothes the inflammation of inconsequence. Praise for CONTRAPUNTAL by Carol Hamilton It is one thing to give a broad history in verse form, but it is quite another to offer a lyrical response while also penetrating key nuances of the story. This ability is clearly evident in Hamilton's handling of her subject. By composing the story of the Schumanns and Joahnnes Brahms, the poet transforms their experience creating a dialogue with readers transcending the parameters of time and the simple, crass facts that have shaken down throughout history. Hamilton's poetic interpretation engenders understanding and empathy, keeping their heartbreak alive for us to contemplate so many years later .... as sympathetic fellow travelers. " -- Dr. Ken Hada, CHIRON REVIEW, Issue #90, spring, 2010, p. 47. ` Praise for Breathing Out, Take 2 by Bruce W. Niedt In Breathing Out, a collection of 24 poems, the reader gets a glimpse of the talent of Bruce W. Niedt, a poet who is obviously moved to write about everything under the sun and then some. Niedt has the ability of studying an object—anything from an earth-bound salad bowl to the far-off planet Mars—picking its “brain” and communicating for it. This goes for people as well, whether they’re the long-gone Chinese poet Li Po or the contemporary “Old Man at Bedtime.”[...] When it comes to creating the perfect last line that not only sums up the poem’s intent but adds a thoughtful twist, Niedt is second to none.[...]st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }
Yes, the subjects of Niedt’s poems run the gamut. There’s even one commemorating “Mr. Peanut [in] Atlantic City” and his clocks, “All the Clocks in my House Are Set to Different Times,” which happen to be two of my favorites in this collection. But then, so are all the others mentioned here. Bruce Niedt has proven his versatility as a poet in this impressive collection.
-- From Philadelphia Poets, Vol. 16, 2010, Editor: Rosemary Cappello Praise for In the Palm of the Land by Marilyn Raff "... each line in Marilyn Raff's book, "In the Palm of the Land", reverberates and touches on many sentiments and feelings each of us would respond to. I will not let any cats out of the bag except to say the plants play a prominent role in Marilyn's verses, as well as wonderful portraits of people and wonderful limning of life's tender moments. Do yourself (and Marilyn) a favor and buy her book. ` Praise for Rappelling Blue Light by Laura Rodley From Pushcart Prize nominee Laura Rodley comes this exquisite collection of poetry. Here minnows trust the sky to bring them gnats, a young woman takes an impromptu road trip to Michigan financed by asparagus-picking money, a dearly loved ancient dog noses the footprints of raccoons, turtles cross a busy highway to lay eggs, and a close friend loses her hair during chemo. In short, Rappelling Blue Light is about all the most sacred aspects of living, and the importance of observing, experiencing, and being. Perhaps the words “stunning” and “elegant” are overused; but perhaps they are not strong enough to describe Rodley’s work. --Robin Stratton, poetry editor of Boston Literary Magazine `Praise for Now Might As Well Be Then by Glenda Beall There are no surprises in Glenda Beall's new book of poems Now Might As Well Be Then. The title gives it all away. These are poems about timelessness, specifically about the timelessness of human experience. There are no surprises, but there is great joy. Not that every poem tells a joyful story. Quite the contrary, some of the best poems here are the most tragic. But even in these poems, there is great poignancy, and in that poignancy the joy of recollecting, of being reminded of how it feels to be human, of having, in fact, those feelings cathartically intensified through the poems. Beall begins the collection with a love poem that celebrates the timelessness of a relationship. The speaker in the title poems says, "You brought me spring in winter // youth when I was old, / you found my childhood self." If not for the dedication of the poem which announces who is intended by the indefinite second person pronoun, one could easily read this as a celebration of many things--god, nature, the mountains of North Carolina—and interestingly, any of these meanings would fit for the poems that follow as these poems celebrate the presence and influence of all of these elements. -- Scott Owens - The Wild Goose Poetry Review - Volume 4, Issue 4, Winter 2009. ` Praise for Medusa Discovers Styling Gel by Dian Duchin Reed [T]he poems in Dian Duchin Reed’s Medusa Discovers Styling Gel are intelligent (and by 'intelligent' one means capacity and capability, verbal mindfulness in its many modes, including the emotive), instantiating a verbal alertness where words reflect and refract in arrangements that compose the unified object of many facets… At its best, the writing is vectored in that perfect location of inevitability and surprise, reminiscent of Heather McHugh. -- P. Nelson in Fiddler Crab Review (fiddlercrabreview.com) on 10 February 2010 ` Praise for Reading Ruskin in Los Angeles by Charlotte Innes Charlotte Innes weaves multiple legacies through her collection Reading Ruskin in Los Angeles.The first is the very personal legacy of her grandfather, who died in a German concentration camp... The other is the larger human legacy of loss, including the horror of war, the need for salvation and the possibilities of transformation. These weighty themes wend through the strongest poems without ever being more than the reader can bear. Her sound and images are too captivating, too hauntingly beautiful... Innes is at her most powerful and developed in the longer "Habitable Space" where she seems finally to allow herself the freedom of uncensored release... Innes touches language itself, the excitement, the ambiguity and the realization that language is the best we have... With images of maps, trains and automobiles combined with rich, exotic and sometimes erotic images, Innes takes us on her journey and keeps us suspended between life and an Otherworld. We ride the edge like a rail, able to see both. Still, we are never allowed to get lost in the ether. It becomes, for us, our own 'habitable space.' ` Praise for Broken Sonnets by Kathleen Kirk What a delight Kathleen Kirk’s Selected Roles (Moon Journal Press 2006) is with its mix of forms. Sonnets and free verse, prose poems and one haibun meld together beautifully in this 38 page chapbook. The subjects, divided into five “acts” plus Prologue and Epilogue, bring us the voices of famous female stage roles, such as Portia and Eurydice, as well as a few other related theater themes.. And, for the uninformed, there is a generous section of “Program Notes!” 4/07, www.babbitsbooks.com. The poet follows this successful debut with Broken Sonnets (Finishing Line 2009), a collection of twenty-two splendid sonnets that sometimes conform to, sometimes confound, the strict forms usually classed as “sonnet”. The poems deal with contradictions, things both lit and hidden, with things broken and whole, with grief and luminous joy. These poems just shine, and this is a recommended chapbook. 12/09 www.finishinglinepress.com -- Comstock Review http://www.comstockreview.org/review/k.html ` Praise for Lost in Hindsight by C.S. Leaf "He has a very real sense of vivid imagery and an exotic sense of language," says Walter Butts, a Goddard faculty member who has just been named New Hampshire's poet laureate. "Ultimately, language is all we have. It can never accurately replicate an emotion or a frame of mind, but it can certainly evoke it. And I think that's what Craig does." --James Sullivan, THE SUNDAY BOSTON GLOBE ` Praise for The Places We Find Ourselves by Diane Kendig In Diane Kendig’s fine 30 page chapbook The Places We Find Ourselves (Finishing Line, 2009), we tour both inner and outer geographies with the poet. There are poems set in the penitentiary and the flatlands of her home state, Ohio, and include a marvelous “Ohio Rag.” There are also a number of fine ekphrastic poems celebrating writers and Frida Kahlo paintings. Above all, she reminds us that we can make our own pathways through life, in strong and mature poems that explore, instruct and delight us. www.finishinglinepress.com. The poet also has a delightful collection of her twelve best pieces in Greatest Hits. 8/09 www.puddinghouse.com -- Comstock Review http://www.comstockreview.org/review/k.html ` Praise for Looking for Montrose Street by Carol Frith Looking for Montrose Street offers a fascinating journey into time and memory, each poem abundant with details of people, objects, colors, sounds, and smells of the past—sliding in and out of pockets of time….Each re-reading will bring greater appreciation of this poet’s skill in the tight use of exact words and penetrating details of description… -- Virginia Buelke, Poets' Forum Magazine, Volume 21, No. 1, August 2009 Most of the twenty-five poems here are in traditional forms…The meter is crisp, and the rhymes sound natural and unforced, even inevitable. Such technical virtuosity is a rarity these days, something I can attest to from having read many thousands of poetry submissions….These poems, collectively, even more than individually, haunt me with a strange nostalgia for a past that not only isn't mine, but is actually very little like mine… -- Jack Hart, Editor, Ship of Fools, winter 2009 issue. Praise for The Range Of Seeing by Laverne Frith The Range Of Seeing follows the year through the seasons, starting with January…there is a clear sense of flowing through time. The strength of these poems, both individually and as a collection, is…vividly observed and felt scenes, and a strong sense of place…in reading these poems I continuously feel the universality of earth and sky, and at the same time the sense of an individual place…The images are…always apt, and the overall effect is of serenity and beauty… -- Jack Hart, Editor, Ship of Fools, winter 2009 issue. ` Praise for The Donkeys Postpone Gratification by Corinne Demas She (Demas) takes the very predictable actions of these more diminutive members of the equine family and with subtle additions of intent or observation turns them into a microcosm of human action and reaction….These poems are beautiful. They are accessible. And like her other work, they are tender and hopeful. Because animals seem to live so completely in the moment, they are a natural palette to draw emotional truth from….Demas has a strong command of language and never falters in her portraits of these furry beasts and the attention they bring to their days….Each simple poem in the book is a blessing, a captured drop of time keenly observed, a crystalline bit of life. -- Sue Harrison The Provincetown Banner, December 28, 2009` Praise for Savage Machinery
by
Karen Rigby Praise for DINNER DATE by Judith Robinson ...Dinner Date offers us a clear perspective on our most profound feelings. By putting love, loss, rage in the context of other peoples lives (imagined or not) we can better understand these same feelings in ourselves and perhaps rethink the way we handle them. This is the stuff of life and Judith Robinson faces it clearly, responds in her own way and challenges us to do the same. -- Natalie Lobe, THE MONTSERRAT REVIEW ` Praise for NOW MIGHT AS WELL BE THEN by Glenda Council Beall These poems are sensuous and rhythmic and graced by lovely diction. Word choices are evocative. The poems are in no way difficult or obscure, and in no way are they simple. Loss, sorrow, humor, regret, joy and more reveal themselves in every one. We recognize and share emotion instantly and understand how the author was feeling about her subject while it was new, and while she was writing about it later. -- Joan L. Cannon, http://hilltopnotes.blogspot.com/2009/11/accessible-poetry.html Praise for The Prodigal Son's Mother by Mary Rose Betten At last, we have Mary Rose Betten’s mythic, compelling, re-imagination of the tale, selected as book-of-the-month by Finishing Line Press. The brothers—in any earlier exegesis—were little more than symbols: repentant sinner vs. righteous legalist. No one wondered, How did they get this way? What was their mother’s part? Poet, dramatist, actor, Betten has the chops to pose these questions. She tells a riveting wrap-around story. Using, to vivid effect, the theatrical language of ancient drama that demands to be read aloud, Betten paints real women struggling to love, understand and forgive. We are in these places, in these women, right from the start. The prodigal’s mother recalls weaning her baby, tempting him with a shiny cup, but choosing not to curb his greedy, infant excesses because, ....to me his zest was beautiful. I wanted him to love me with that same zest... ...I tried whispering while he drank, “the boundaries of the cup...” ...perhaps had my whisper been more insistent... -- Alice Campbell Ramano, The Mom Egg, Fall 2009 special edition online Page 110-111 ` Praise for Visionware by Caridad Moro-McCormick
Praise for Amy Small-McKinney's Clear Moon, Frost I have called Clear Moon, Frost a Crone-like chapbook not to say that it is death-focused (and certainly not to insult the poet!), but to emphasize that these are poems written from a mature viewpoint—and, indeed, a viewpoint that can even look beyond death, as the poet does in the exquisite “Found” (again reproduced in full). ` Praise for Object of Desire by Carol Lynn Grellas The most noble emotion is love, of course. But where there is love, there is pain, and nowhere is this more evident than in Object of Desire by Carol Lynn Grellas. As stylish and sophisticated as the beauty who adorns the cover, this collection presents with warmth and grace each sacred moment of being alive—the blessings, the losses, the haunting image of an opportunistic fly loitering on the slack jaw of your beloved pet. Woven throughout is the story of a woman grieving for her mother; spending the first New Year's eve without her, waiting for an epiphany / or message sent by an archangel / telling us she's arrived at her destination. For me, the most powerful poem is “An Unexpected Toast,” which I have yet to read without choking back tears. The fourth time I read this poem it was to my mother, and I know we were both thinking of the other emotion that goes with love—gratitude. Mine is profound, and I thank Carol Lynn for the reminder. -- Robin Stratton, Boston Literary Magazine, Editor-in-Chief `Praise for CONTRAPUNTAL by Carol Hamilton CONTRAPUNTAL is the work of a sophisticated, mature poet. Carol Hamilton, Poet Laureate of Oklahoma, 1995-1997, brings her years of lyrical experience and her keen eye for cultural history to the story of Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms." -- Review by Dr. Ken Hada, East Central University, Ada, OK on visual arts collective poetry, 2009/09/29 . ` Praise for Arriving at the Riverside by RT Castleberry Pastoral, bucolic poetry has just never been my cup of tea but I adore surrealistic poetry and literature with its treatment of tension and conflict often being the subtext beneath a driving narrative. The question for me was always how does one blend or reconcile the two. RT Castleberry is one of the few American poets, in my opinion, who does it so well. And this chapbook, published by one of the finest small press publishers, Finishing Line Press, shares with us a graceful, gritty, subtle perspective weaving nature’s role in shaping the city geographically and culturally. -- P McRae ,
Open Salon, Oct. 10, 2009 Praise for Jill Pelaez Baumgaertner's My Father's Bones and Julie L. Moore's Election Day Jill Pelaez Baumgaertner's My Father's Bones and Julie L. Moore's Election Day, both published by Finishing Line Press in 2006, were reviewed in an article by Chris Willerton titled, "The Commiserating Muse: Four Poets' Treatments of Suffering and Grief" in the summer 2009 issue of Christianity and Literature. Willerton writes, "[Each author] shows us a hard-won confidence in God's willingness that we should heal. Moore's favorite influences seem to be those she salutes in epigraphs to her poems--Wendell Berry, Annie Dillard, Mary Oliver, Mark Strand. She has learned from them how to keep colloquial language nimble, tight, and inventive and how to peer at cosmic issues through ordinary incidents and rural scenery. But Baumgaertner, already a master of the meaningful anecdote, invokes a special formality by casting twelve of her poems into a requiem sequence. Before and after the requiem are anecdotes about her elderly father and about reactions to his death . . . . Broadly speaking, they take the reader through quiet grief, fierce contemplation, and reconciliation" (765). -- Chris Willerton, Christianity and Literature, summer 2009 Praise for Angela Alaimo O’Donnell’s Mine Angela Alaimo O’Donnell’s Mine is set in the Wilke-Barre-Scranton area of Pennsylvania, played-out coal mining towns in the northeastern region of the state. O’Donnell’s images, like the cover photograph of her marvelous collection embody through her language, concrete and impressionistic at once, the poignant stories of her Italian forebears she weaves into her poems. O’Donnell writes with great economy and lyric intensity, often employing a compressed rhyme and off-rhyme, which lends a musical intensity, and even weight, to her poems: the ballast and gravity of coal, “smoke and soot,” “slag heaps,” and more than anything the passionate heft of the Italian immigrant heart. -- Joseph Bathanti, Italian Americana, Spring 2009 `Praise for William Wright’s The Ghost Narratives The chapbook occupies an interesting place in American Poetry these days. It used to be the first refuge of the beginning poet, a format that permitted the publication of a group solid poems without the conjoined headaches of thematic unity or narrative line, a way to announce one’s presence as a working poet while the longer manuscript was still in process. That it was also the first refuge of the self-published didn’t help its reputation any, and if that weren’t enough, the lack of heft in chapbook manuscripts meant that they were often saddle-stapled rather than perfect-bound, in consequence of which they shelved awkwardly. Yet in the past twenty years, the poetry chapbook has become something to be taken very seriously indeed. Legitimate chapbook publishers and competitions have proliferated. More and more established poets turn to the chapbook as they develop tightly themed, intricately balanced collections that seem almost to draw breath as they are read. William Wright’s first full-length book, Dark Orchard (Texas Review Press, 2006) received the Breakthrough Poetry Prize and showed readers a poet throughly enmeshed in the Southern lanscape that shaped his childhood and adolescence, a landscape rife with beauty and hope and, of course, regret. With The Ghost Narratives (Finishing Line Press, 2008) Wright turns to the chapbook as he uses the lushly metaphorical landscape of the South to create a series of mediations on death and what it may mean. What makes this little book remarkable is the fine mix of incandescent image with language honed to something visionary and song-like. ` Praise for Pamela Garvey's FEAR Garvey is able, in poem after poem, to deftly locate the intersection of the forces of conflict and lay it bare. These poems are so thought-drawn, examining the filaments of an argument and testing each one, that I found myself puzzling through a series of philosophical questions after reading the chapbook. What is faith? Why is violence random? Or is it? Are we all simultaneously both victim and potential persecutor?... For those interested in the craft of poetry, Garvey has the potential to be a poet’s poet, her poems examples of what art can do in the world. Her attention to line, form, and the basics of poetry make her work an open textbook for other writers. -- Rebecca Ellis RATTLE, June 2009 `Praise for Sue Thomas Hegyvary's Fire Season While exploring life as a landowner on the eastern side of the Cascade Mountains, Hegyvary became interested in understanding forest management and the impact that forest fires were having on the environment around them. As Fire Season shows, "You cannot buy a forest and simply let it be or you'll lose it.”
-- Writer/reviewer: Ashley Wiggin Source: University Week, magazine of the University of Washington, Seattle Date: August 20, 2009 `Praise for Charles Coté’s Flying for the Window Charles Coté’s first collection, Flying for the Window, comprises poems that build on, respond to, and complicate the elegy as it is found in contemporary American poetry. Flying for the Window is an extended apostrophe, an address to and concerning someone who has died. This lacuna of sorts—this vanished presence—permits Coté to explore emotional terrain that would be inaccessible were he speaking of or to his son while still alive; there are simply modes of expression we do not discover until after the person or persons with whom we wish to talk are no longer here. This lends a certain kind of honesty to the collection, and when combined with Coté’s starkness of language and expression makes for a powerful début collection. -- Eric Weinstein, Poetry Editor Prick of the Spindle In his first published chapbook, Flying for the Window, Charles Coté chronicles with small, digestible poems his son Charlie’s losing battle with cancer. Coté takes us from the discovery of his son’s disease, to the treatments that don’t work, to Charlie’s premature death (he was only 18) and finally to the mourning and grief of the poet and his wife. With each page, it is near impossible to miss a the poet’s kicked-in-the-gut grief. The death has damaged his marriage, and forces him into an emotional neutrality which begs toward a hopefulness that never quite lands. Yet all the while, the poet is careful to keep the lens on Charlie, not on himself, and the result is earnest celebration of the boy’s brief but meaningful life. -- John Deming and Dieandra Hermosillo, coldfrontmag `Praise for Martha Andrews Donovan's Dress Her in Silk Each poem in this collection is just as strong, just as provocative, just as clear-eyed and exquisite [as the opening poem "Her Story"]. This is a book to read again and again. These are poems that will sink into your bones. Shine my crystal ball and call me psychic, but Dress Her in Silk will launch Martha Andrews Donovan into the realm of New Hampshire's finest poets, and that's some good company." -- Rebecca Rule, Concord Sunday Monitor, June 14, 2009 ` Praise for Lesley Wheeler's SCHOLARSHIP GIRL Half creator, half recreator, the artist’s task is to make real the unreal via the vicariously manipulated senses of the reader. Wheeler does this beautifully in the opening poem, “Remembering My Mother’s Childhood,” with language so sensually evocative it transports the reader to a “mythical” past “purified / of reeking detail” and “cooled by duplication” which she nevertheless recreates via borrowed or “invented” sense memory, “because,” she argues, “it invented me, and lies / are my birthright.” -- Wendy Vardaman, RATTLE, fall 2008 ` Praise for On A Good Day One Discovers Another Poet by Helen Degen Cohen On A Good Day One Discovers Another Poet is poetry about poetry. Cohen not only accomplishes this risky endeavor, but she actually manages to create a tour de force that holds its own as one of the finest chapbooks from a Chicago artist to come out in recent history. -- C.J. Laity ChicagoPoetry.com `Praise for Relation/Couch/Dreaming by Diane Schenker The poems in this collection have several recurring themes: family relationships, the natural world, death. The language is unsentimental and unsparing, but also vivid, with striking images. . . . The language is sharp, tough, and precise. . . . Schenker’s chapbook is well worth reading. -- Mary Ellen Geer www.fiddlercrabreview.com `Praise for Reconfigured by Bonnie Maurer Two new books by Indianapolis poets have recently crossed my desk….. Bonnie Maurer’s new collection, Reconfigured, takes a different tack. Rather than project herself across the life of another, Maurer uses her voice as an instrument for sounding the depths of her particular experience. For Maurer, this means finding ways to come to terms with her own mortality, a process that underscores how finally alone each of us turns out to be. Fortunately, we have poetry like Maurer’s to also make it clear that while we may feel like islands, we have language and art to, if nothing else, share the profundity of our ultimate separateness. From “Swimming Alone:”You pick up the soft piece -- David Hoppe, blog, NUVO NEWSWEEKLY, Indianapolis, 2009 ` Praise for Visionware by Caridad Moro-McCormick Caridad Moro McCormick’s collection Visionware (Finishing Line Press) is simultaneously heartbreaking and devious. The work is exquisite, but not so fragile that it cannot stand up to the rough-and-tumble of the reader’s inspection. Her narrative poetry is a trip through time and history. Once you agree upon the voyage, you will discover universal truths on every page, challenging and pushing you along. The themes of family, separation and sacrifice show up throughout and are tripping points and anchors for poet and reader. For those who distance themselves from poetry, I am happy to report that Moro-McCormick’s collection is accessible in a way that does not require an MFA to truly appreciate the stellar and truthful work that she has done here. At the center of it all Visionware is about love — recognizing it and finding a way to keep it. -- Michelle Sewell, Girlchild Press, 2009 ` Praise for Drawn Into Someone's Passion by Sue Terry Driskell Drawn Into Someone's Passion is a collection of 26 poems that invites a tender comparison of full-blown flora and fauna with an appreciation of an ever-budding love life. In the manner of haiku, the poet summons emotion indirectly through her vision of the seasons and the glorious display that each brings. In arranging scenes of the flowering of both plants and humans, the poet evokes a physical and mental connection. She sees dogwood petals curl in snow, white blossoms kissing...In summer, she thinks of a loved one as she gathers sweet, early strawberries and muses, "...I would offer you a taste of these,/ my mouth still full of those tiny seeds." She thrills at touch of her lover's earlobe, soft as a rose petal. Passion for nature's wonderland and each other is mutual. -- Mary Popham, The Louisville Courier-Journal, March 7, 2009 ` Praise for Attempts At Location by Katie Hae Ryun Leo Katie Hae Ryun Leo represents a fresh Asian-American voice with this collection of expressive poems...Her world view is expansive, not cynical or self-consciously introspective. There is vitality and optimism in her writing. -- Bill Drucker, Korean Quarterly, Winter 2009 (vol. 12, number 2)
In “Romeo's Ruse,” Murphy leaves us with a meditation on the effect of all he's touched on: “Juliette's wiser bedtime / stories, antidote to a boy's dreams, / never dispense into a daughter's ear.” And so that's it then; we plod on, unwise, never-wise, as the characters in Murphy's poems. -- Roy Wang, NewPages, March 2009 ` Praise for Francis d’Assisi 2008 by Gary Metras There is power in the narrative itself. Great effort is apparent in this austerity, but Metras bears it well, and like those who work hard in tiny shacks that serve as churches, there is something strangely inspiring in this lack of embellishment, almost shaming us a s readers in our relative opulence. -- Gram Davies, in The Centrifugal Eye, Vol. 4, Issue 1, February 2009 ` Praise for Faith to See and Other Poems by Kathe L. Palka Her first chapbook, The Grace of Light (2004), introduced readers to Palka's mid-Jersey landscape and dealt largely with transcendence: the sensing in objects and events a presence or power that rises above the physical reality of experience. With Faith to See and Other Poems, that transcendence becomes the manifestation of Christian faith." --Phebe Davidson, Alehouse 2009 ` Praise for After the Poison by Collin Kelley --Barbara Bialick/Author of Time Leaves, from Ibbetson Street Press `Praise for Mine by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell The poems in Mine are mostly elegiac in tone, lyrics of family, of a home life, of rituals, of landscapes in smoke, of hard love. . . Inspiring and well-wrought, O’Donnell’s poems are witty, dusted with humor, dark at their roots. Her stanzas ring with good sounds, drive on with a regular rhythm, perfect for conveying her bluesy themes . . .[Yet] O’Donnell’s literary strengths are more than musical. She writes strong narratives informed by striking, smoking imagery, using the language of digging, mining the Underworld for black truth. --MICHAEL LYTHGOE, WINDHOVER, JANUARY 2009 ` Praise for At the Center by Roselyn Elliott Roselyn Elliott won the first Blueline Chapbook Award with The Separation of Kin (Blueline)... She follows this with the stunning At the Center (Finishing Line, 2008), one of the best chapbooks of the year, any year. These poems explore the many faces of age, and confinement in facilities such as hospitals and nursing homes. As a nurse, the poet is able to draw from a wide experiential palette and it is richly colored with her humanity in beautifully nuanced poetry of witness and transcendence. Highly recommended. --Jennifer MacPherson, The Comstock Review `Praise for Japanese for Daydreamers by Judy Halebsky This fact alone is a good reason to invest in a copy of Japanese for Daydreamers, since this reviewer predicts good things to come for young Judy Halebsky. The other, more important reason is that the book is filled with uniquely original, skillfully crafted and entertaining poems. Originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Halebsky currently resides in Tokyo and is a research scholar in Japanese literature at Hosei University. Her poems employ a shrewd understanding and clever execution of the nuances of both Japanese and English language and literature, with a talent and sense of humor far beyond the range of the typical scholar or translator. -- Hillel Wright, Metropolis, Issue #746 ` Praise for Lost in Hindsight by C.S. Leaf More evidence of the literary renaissance in Lowell, Massachusetts and the vibrant creative economy in the Merrimack Valley. A poetic coming of age: Early days in Port inspire Pulitzer-nominated collection. Though the poems are not directly about the city he grew up in, Newburyport native Craig Back {who writes under the name C.S. Leaf} says his collection, “Lost in Hindsight,” chronicles his early life and coming of age in the Clipper City. The book, published by Finishing Line Press, was recently nominated for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize as well as the 2008 Dylan Thomas Prize. --Katie Curley, Newburyport Daily News `Praise for A Visible Sign by Jeff Newberry A Visible Sign, the debut chapbook by Jeff Newberry (and nominee for the Conference on Christianity and Literature's Book of the Year Award), gathers poems desperate for the slippery tangibility of spiritual significance. Throughout the collection, Newberry's lines both comfort and question. There are moments of humor and doubt, prophecy and supplication, yet an endearing sense of warmth resides at the core of everything. Split into three sections, A Visible Sign engages a wide array of themes, from a philosophical pondering of God's existence, to the bleak diagnosis of terminal cancer. Throughout, Newberry remains personal and poignant. It's not surprising that these poems have a big heart beating at the center of them, one that is not afraid to speak what most would leave unsaid. --Jay Robinson, Barn Owl Review, Dec. 2008 I opened the pages of a new poetry collection and remembered that the fluidity and free-flowing nature of human thought is exactly what makes it beautiful. Thoughts were never intended to fit into a concrete mold, which is what Jeff Newberry reminded me of and is why Relief recommends his new poetry collection, A Visible Sign. ` Praise for Donner: A Passing by Shana Youngdahl Despite a few areas where the author could present events less "tellingly," most moments ring true and vivid. The series is candidly achieved and probes the old story/history, falling just shy of asking if the same could happen again. Youngdahl's observations are appropriately trim, cutting to the heart of every situation. As a collection, Donner: A Passing is an interpretative work not soon to be excised from memory. -- Cynthia Reeser, Prick of the Spindle
Letters From Down Under is a slim volume of powerful poetry by poet, essayist, playwright and Murray State University Arts and Humanities Faculty Scholar Constance Alexander. Her title reference, "down under," is an emotional territory primarily populated by women. Yet the aim of Alexander's stunning, vibrant verse is to engage readers of both sexes in exploring the vicissitudes of the human heart. There's nothing sentimental about Alexander's work. Her voice and images are strong, her attitudes are direct, and her humor is dead-on delightful. In fact, her precise diction and utter honesty embody sentiment itself. Letters From Down Under is a remarkable book that's a must-have addition to comprehensive collections of contemporary poetry, feminist literature and Kentucky authors' work. --L. Elisabeth Beattie, The Louisville Courier-Journal • June 7, 2008 ` Praise for Savage Machinery by Karen Rigby Karen Rigby’s second chapbook, Savage Machinery, opens with the quiet, unflinching ease of an haute-voyeur. While the subjects of the poems vary from the personal to the historical, they are always sensual. Rigby has a knack for letting her delight shine through while maintaining her role as the discreet recorder of all she observes and envisions. Stylistically poised and direct, each poem is true to its title; Rigby rarely takes the opportunity to stray between-the-lines. With her boundaries clearly defined, Rigby is thorough in her exploration of a subject. Although there isn’t a bum or rough moment to be found among these poems, Rigby’s tactility and her highly original metaphors ensure there is never a predictable moment. --
Brooklyn Copeland,
Gently Read Literature, July 2008 ` Praise for Gentling the Bones by Katherine E. Young History, family, and family history are insightfully examined in poems that are a pleasure to read and to discuss. They are intriguing in part because of their self-awareness as imagined scenes. The surface of the "real" past, that is, the detail available directly through observation and hearsay, emphasizes its ordinariness.... Yet the recreated imagined past has a freshness and vitality that goes beyond the surface detail. The poems of Gentling the Bones are not only about the speaker's southernness but about the act of reinventing it, the romance of history. We see the formation of particular images of the past, viewed from a certain angle. This chapbook makes a fine debut for poet Katherine Young. --Janet McCann, BigCityLit: www.BigCityLit.com 2008 ` Praise for Roomful of Sparrows by Mary Buchinger I appreciate the proportions in registers of sentiment Buchinger has kept to. The common resounds more commonly throughout the book. She observes sparrows, beetles, reads Tolstoy, goes skating (on a pond with a frog frozen in it), companionably in a day to day world that is familiar to us. As she trumps the exceptional experience of flying in Business Class, she elevates mundane occurrences into exceptionally perceptive moments. --Michael Todd Steffen. Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene 2008 ` Praise for CHROME by Lianne Spidel " The observations of Lianne Spidel are sometimes poignant, sometimes ironic, always precise. There is a thrill that comes in the reading of each poem when we say to ourselves, 'Yes, that's it, she's hit the nail on the head.'" -- David Lee Garrison, RATTLE, No. 28 ` Praise for Mother Chaos: Under Electric Light, by Mattie Quesenberry Smith It seems to me that the crafting of poetry requires a finely tuned command of the English language. Mattie possesses this quality in a manner which has become rare in our time. Her poems can be pondered over and over again with fresh insights gleaned, illumining the present realities with words that conjure images like a watercolor painting. -- Elena Maria Vida, Tea at Trianon `Praise for Elegy and Collapse by Patty Paine "Poetry can be therapy to wounded people. Patty Paine releases a great anguish in Elegy and Collapse....Many of these poems are representations of her agony and frustration as part of a refugee Korean family stifled by our society's indifference. She tells hard truths in many of these poems. Like painting and music, poetry can be an expressive remedy in many instances. " --Paul Zimmer, Georgia Review `Praise for Leave Time by Jeff Worley "Jeff Worley's Leave Time is a lovely and moving dirge for his father, a wounded World War II veteran, stricken and at last taken by Alzheimer's disease. This story is told often by good writers these days, but Worley's treatment is especially crisp and adept." --Paul Zimmer, Georgia Review ` Praise for How to Get There by Paul J. Willis (available on amazon.com)"Repeatedly throughout this handsomely bound little book we feel that we have indeed been guided through the material, the manifest - with much praise and even awe - and then across a bridge to the hands of something else entirely: the other dimension of life's fullness, the spirit." --Carmine Sarracino, Prairie Schooner `Praise for Into The River Somewhere by Mark Jackley
Mark Jackley's is a poetry of moments. There are twenty-five brief poems in this chapbook, and each seizes upon its own small miracle, or asks a koan-like question for which there is no answer. In this way, we follow the poet's heart, at times like "blind men bumping in the dark," and at others with the illumination of a personal delight to guide us. Conversational, but with the ability to move easily across time and space, Jackley's poems let the reader lose themselves in a moment, as when rain "bumps against the window, / staggered and ecstatic / to bring the news: The heavens / cup the earth, and now / the world is small, and quiet, / as a breath." Praise for Gentling the Bones by Katherine E. Young Such rich verses, though revealing, actually provide fuel for continual discovery, the reader acutely aware of the complexity of roots and of origin. Young's ability to capture the profundity of life also shines through, exuding such ease of pen and heart that no room remains for questions of emotive authenticity or reader motivation. -- Whitney M. Smith, The Montserrat Review ` Praise for Hollyhocks by Robert L. Brimm All of Brimm’s poems are unpretentious and easy to understand. Like Billy Collins, he believes that a poem should invite the reader in and then show him its mystery. We read the poems and immediately know what they mean; we read them again to savor them. ` -- David Lee Garrison, Ohio Writer ` Praise for The Art of Writing and Others by George Held George Held’s 2007 FLP chapbook, The Art of Writing and Others, is a “Nov-Dec Pick” in Small Press Review. In his tenth book of poems, The Art of Writing and Others, George Held’s erudition is evident on every page. Melville, Van Gogh, John Donne, Bishop, Spenser – his topics range widely, yet his language and angle of approach is always intelligent and sensitive.... Although the endings of some of the poems may leave the reader wanting, Mr. Held’s work is full of liveliness and observation. He more than deserves the beautiful typesetting and careful editing that the well respected Finishing Line Press offers. -- Eleanor Goodman, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene
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