Book Reviews

Before Dreaming by Arn Strasser   Budding Branch Books, an imprint of Asher & Merriman Publishers ISBN# 978-0-9841874-1-6 2015, 89 pp., $19.95 www.buddingbranchbooks.com   Before Dreaming almost is correct; Between Dreaming would be accurate. Arn Strasser’s collection investigates the interaction between the dream state and wakefulness. He approaches the enigma of the dream world with

Uttered Chaos, 2015, 74 pages, $10   ISBN 978-0988936645   Available via Amazon   Mrs. Schrödinger’s Breast is one of the most complex and carefully layered collections of poetry that most of us will ever read. I wondered, when I saw the title, whether this was a feminist restatement of Woody Allen being chased over

ISBN-13 978-0-9980999-4-1 The Poetry Box 2017, 73 pp, $12.00 On her web site, www.triciaknoll.com, Tricia Knoll speaks of herself in the third person. She is a tree hugging . . . Master Gardener who routinely talks to crows who ignore her. She also calls herself an eco-poet. In the opening line of “The Klickitats,” the first

Painted Thrush Press, 2015, 65 pages, $12 ISBN 978-1508484356 Available via Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Cascade-Siskiyou-Poems-Pepper-Trail/dp/150848435X The Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon and northern California are what writers of stories of the west, both historic and fictional, call “rough country.” It is in fact about as rough as anyone might ask for in the lower 48 states,

Riddle, Fish Hook, Thorn, Key by Kelly Terwilliger Airlie Press, Portland, OR ISBN-13 978-0989579964 2017, 79 pp., $16.00 Reviewed by Anita Sullivan When you pick up a copy of this remarkable book, stop! Look at the cover – really look at it. Across the bottom rests a narrow strip of seashore in vivid blues, whites and

No Acute Distress by Jennifer Richter Southern Illinois University Press ISBN-13 #978-0809334827 2016, 67 pp, $15.95 Author website: www.jenniferrichterpoet.com Reviewed by Tiah Lindner Raphael From Disease to Ease: Transforming Pain into Resilience Jennifer Richter’s second full-length collection, No Acute Distress, was published in 2016 by Southern Illinois University Press as part of the Crab Orchard Series in

Everything is Shining By Jan David Madsen Lulu, 2016, 66 pages, $15 ISBN 978-1329812314 Available at https://www.lulu.com/ Author website: https://zestymumbles.com/ Reviewed by Emily Pittman Newberry When Carolyn Martin sent out a call for poets to write reviews of books, I scanned the list of books on the OPA website and was drawn to Everything is

Here From Somewhere Else by Judith Arcana Left Fork Press, 2015, 26 pages, $10 ISBN 978-0692589526 Available at https://leftfork.org/books/ Reviewed by Tricia Knoll Judith Arcana’s chapbook Here From Somewhere Else was a perfect choice for the Turtle Island Quarterly’s 2015 Editor’s Prize. The press focuses on deepening connections to the natural world. The eighteen poems in the collection

Setting the Fires by Darlene Pagán Airlie Press, 2015, $15.00 Reviewed by Carolyn Martin When Randall Jarrell defined a poet as someone “who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times,” he could have been describing Darlene Pagán. In Setting the Fires, lightning strikes this

Nice and Loud by Lois Rosen Tebot Bach, 2015, $16.00 Reviewed by Susan Clayton Goldner Nice and Loud, a collection of beautifully crafted poetry by Lois Rosen, is authentic and yet tender. It is intimate, unselfconscious and introspective. Her story takes the reader into the world of a young Jewish girl growing up in a cramped,