Willa Carroll
Demolition Suite
Split Rock Press, 2023
$12
Playlist:
Demolition Suite engages climate change, environmental degradation, and hazardous exposure with unexpected poetics. From contaminated sites to troubled bodies of water, forest fires to rewilding zones, this innovative sequence covers wide ground. Fluid tones shift between grief, wit, intimacy, and beyond. With kinetic diction, these pages stage embodied responses to our imperiled planet. Out of crisis, Carroll forges strange radiance, envisioning ecological restoration.
Poems read:
“Score for the Body with Bioaccumulation”
“Score for the Body as Fire Season”
“Score for the Body as Calving Glacier”
“Score for Sovereign Body”
“Score for Bodies Dressed in Pollen”
former DMQ Review contributor
David Denny
Angel of the Waters
Shanti Arts, 2023
$18.95
Playlist:
In his third full-length collection, Angel of the Waters, David Denny sings a variety of odes to rescue pups and window spiders, angels and freight trains, Starbucks and The Beatles, film noir actors and post-impressionist painters. In a world besieged by bullies and braggarts, Denny's poetry creates a refuge for the meek. Unique among North American writers, he makes his gentle stand in the heart of the suburban wilderness, excavating the extraordinary within the ordinary, holding up shiny bits of treasure among the expansive hodgepodge of invasive junk.
Poems read:
“Open Letter to the Watchers"
“Man Beneath a Tree"
“Aubade"
Ken Weisner
Songs for the Great Horned
Shanti Arts, 2024
$18.95
Playlist:
Songs for the Great Horned casts every poem in the second person (every “you” is the great horned owl), so the poems necessarily break into rapture, lament, and other rhythms of thought to meet the moment. Beneath the surface, the reader encounters grief, personal loss, sober reckonings with mankind and history, but also love, fervor, always awe—for this creature.
Poems read:
“Independence Day"
“How You Come for Us"
“Incident Report"