May 2023

Rosie Prohías driscoll

Poised for Flight
Finishing Line Press, 2022
$19.99

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“The poems in Rosie Prohías Driscoll’s debut collection are stepping stones through the liminal spaces which marry the past and present: dual heritages, bilingual explorations into the ways we carry our ancestors in language, memory, and faith. Through a language of her own belonging and with skillfully crafted images and metaphors, Prohías Driscoll fathoms the power of transience and inheritance, all of us pajaritos in flight."
– Richard Blanco,
2013 Presidential Inaugural Poet

Poems Read:
“Papá del Loro"
“Feathers"
“Diagramming Sentences"
“Word Blossoms"

Jeannine Hall Gailey

Flare, Corona
BOA Editions, 2023
$17.00

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Flare, Corona describes the last six years in which I was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer, then multiple sclerosis, then the coronavirus pandemic happened. So it's a really upbeat book! Just kidding, but it is all about survival in a variety of circumstances.

Poems Read:
“In a Plague Year, I Found Foxes" “Irradiate"
“Calamity"

Matthew Thorburn

String
Louisiana State University Press, 2023 $18.95

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A book-length sequence of poems, String tells the story of a teenage boy’s experiences in a time of war and its aftermath. He loses his family and friends, his home and the life he knew, but survives to tell his story. Written in the boy’s fractured, echoing voice—in lines that are frequently enjambed and use almost no punctuation—String embodies his trauma and confusion in a poetic sequence that is part lullaby, part nightmare, but always a music that is uniquely his.

Poems read:
“Once”
“The Magician”
“Pale Stars”
“Shatterings”