Caroliena Cabada
True Stories
Unsolicited Press, 2024
$17.95
Playlist:
This book is a kind of fusion of two different poetry collections I was writing and thought were distinct: one collection was about extreme weather and climate change, and the other was about isolation during the pandemic. I soon realized, though, that many of the same images, feelings, and experiences were echoed across both collections. For the poems read here, I tried to choose ones that exist in the bridge between the two halves — ones that are a little bit stormy and a little bit lonely.
Poems read:
“Futile Denial”
“First, Ask”
“Inflorescence”
“Geo Logic”
Tim Hunt
Western Where
Broadstone Books, 2024
$17.00
Playlist:
The stark, moody poems of Tim Hunt’s latest collection Western Where put me in mind of a Paul Simon lyric, “Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike / They’ve all come to look for America.” Though in Hunt’s version the highways are out west; the mood prevails, only the scenery changes. By the time we get to the exquisite third section, I felt as if I was in a Cormac McCarthy novel: vast wide-open, sun-bleached plains, arid deserts, desolate, and unforgiving. The journey is all about searching for what we have already found within ourselves. —Alan Catlin
Poems read:
“Still Life: Barbed Wire With Tumbleweeds (Owens Valley, CA)”
“Silver Mine (Tonopah, NV)”
“In This America (sections 1 & 21)”
“Rodeo Ride”
Alison Stone
Informed
NYQ Books, 2024
$18.95
Playlist:
Informed addresses contemporary subjects in traditional forms, including pantoums, ghazals, villanelles, and a jeweled sonnet crown. Love, loss, family, mythology, music, and current events are placed within these structures to add pressure to the subject matter. Stormy Daniels, Sandra Bland, and Echo all have their say, as does a small-town girl struggling with suburban conformity.
Poems read:
“Visit”
“Home to Roost”
“Say Her Name”
Poem Inspired by a Line by Natalie Diaz