Book Reviews

OPA seeks to promote poets by featuring independent reviews on our website. To add your book to our review list, or to become a reviewer please contact our book review coordinator. See the list of books that need review here. See the book review guidelines here.

Every Door Recklessly Ajar by Nancy Flynn, reviewed by Ann Staley

Reviewed by Ann Staley Every Door Recklessly Ajar By Nancy Flynn Cayuga Lake Books, Ithaca, New York ISBN 9781681110356 2015, 72 pp., $12 (on Amazon) Nancy Flynn.com Nancy Flynn’s slender volume of poems is filled with joy and mystery, grief and remembrance. It is the home of many pleasures, beginning with the zany, And I Will […]

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Reverberations from Fukushima: 50 Japanese Poets Speak Out, reviewed by Ruthy Kanagy

Review by Ruthy Kanagy Reverberations from Fukushima: 50 Japanese Poets Speak Out Edited by Leah Stenson and Asao Sarukawa Aroldi Inkwater Press (Portland, Oregon) ISBN: 9781629010656 2014, 192pp., $14.95 3.11.11 is a date forever imprinted on the memories of Japanese and other persons who were in Japan on that fateful day. A massive tsunami launched

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Anuk-Ité: Double-Face Woman by Dorothy Black Crow, reviewed by Carter McKenzie

Review by Carter McKenzie  Anuk-Ité: Double-Face Woman, Poems  By Dorothy Black Crow Turnstone Publishing (Corvallis, Oregon) ISBN: 9781479338580 2012, 39 pp., $9.90 (on Amazon) dorothyblackcrow.com The poems in Anuk-Ité: Double-Face Woman by Dorothy Black Crow demonstrate the skill and wisdom of balance; through deft understatement they achieve the resonance of cumulative effect: they are weavings

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High-Voltage Lines by Tiel Aisha Ansari, reviewed by Lois Rosen

Review by Lois Rosen High-Voltage Lines by Tiel Aisha Ansari Barefoot Muse Press 2012 ISBN-13:978-615663760 Paperback: 40 pages Tiel Aisha Ansari’s poetry collection, High-Voltage Lines, lives up to its name. Like the conduits delivering strong electrical charges, sparking the air around them, her artful lines convey potent messages. Tiel treats the reader to a dazzling

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Just This, Tanka by Margaret Chula, reviewed by Penelope Schott

Review by Penelope Scambly Schott Just This, Tanka by Margaret Chula, Mountains and Rivers Press, 2013 92 pages, $16.00 Imagine there is someone standing in front of you with a lifted hand and upstretched fingers. Two fingers are presenting a delicate object in order for you to see it clearly. Listen as the person whispers to

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Snow White, When No One Was Looking by Donna Prinzmetal, reviewed by Carolyn Martin

Review by Carolyn Martin Snow White, When No One Was Looking by Donna Prinzmetal CW Books, Cincinnati, OH, 2014 ISBN: 978-1625490841 2014, 84 pages, $16.20 Reading Donna Prinzmetal’s collection of persona poems, Snow White, When No One Was Looking (Cincinnati, OH: CW Books, 2014) is like falling down a rabbit hole and landing in the midst

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Woodstock Baby, by Joan Dobbie, reviewed by Tim Volem

Woodstock Baby by Joan Dobbie The Unforgettables Press ([email protected]) ISBN 978-1-4923138-3-0 2013, $9.00 Joan Dobbie’s Woodstock Baby is described on its cover as a Novel in Poetry, and while it is not technically a verse novel, with a formal structure (stanzas, rhyme scheme), it is composed of short free verse poems that tell a story.

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The Parachute Jump Effect by Judith Arcana, reviewed by Penelope Scambly Schott

  Review by Penelope Scambly Schott The Parachute Jump Effect by Judith Arcana Uttered Chaos Press (www.utteredchaos.org) ISBN 978-0-9823716-9-5 2012, $10.00 Unless you are of a certain age and grew up in Chicago, you won’t understand the title of this chapbook until you get to the final poem, a shared recollection of a long-gone ride in

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Rending the Garment by Willa Schneberg, reviewed by Eleanor Berry

Review by Eleanor Berry Rending the Garment by Willa Schneberg Box Turtle Press ISBN 978-1-893654-14-3 2014, 103 pp., $16 The couple in the cover photograph compel our gaze. “Should I recognize them?” we may wonder, thinking they must be stars in a classic film of the 1940s. As we read, we discover that they made

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Controlled Hallucinations by John Sibley Williams, reviewed by Penelope Scambly Schott

Review by Penelope Scambly Schott Controlled Hallucinations by John Sibley Williams FutureCycle Press ISBN 978 – 1938853227 2013, 78 pp., $14.00 http://johnsibleywilliams.wordpress.com This book is well-titled. It contains the poetry of allusion. Williams’ go-to symbols are such elements as the sea, mirrors, birds, or even gravity itself. These appear frequently in this poetry of transparent mystery.

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