National Poetry Month: The Health Report by Travis Mossotti

Posted on March 8, 2012

And so another April begins. A month where the poetry community in America, fractured and bitter as it may be, feels compelled by nationalistic pride or obligation to reassess the health and status of poetry in the country. The Academy of American Poets website says it is a time when “poets around the country band […]


Review of Double Shadow by Carl Phillips

Posted on March 8, 2012

Double Shadow, by Carl Phillips Farrar, Strauss & Giroux. $23.00 hardcover. Reviewed by James Crews   The poet Carl Phillips must love the sea, standing “where the land ends no differently/ than it’s ever had to.” I don’t think he’d ever simply say “on the beach.” He loves not just the physical and emotional spaces […]


Review of Horoscopes for the Dead by Billy Collins

Posted on March 8, 2012

Horoscopes for the Dead  by Billy Collins Random House (2011) $24  (hardback) Reviewed by James Crews Billy Collins’ ninth collection of poetry pokes and prods the idea of mortality—the author’s as well as our own—more than in any of his previous books. This one opens with a watchful speaker standing, “before the joined grave of […]


Review of The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands by Nick Flynn

Posted on March 8, 2012

The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands by Nick Flynn Graywolf Press (2011) $22 Reviewed by James Crews One reads Nick Flynn’s newest book of poems—his first in almost a decade—and emerges from the broken narratives and fractured voices with a host of nagging questions. And then the reader wonders: Is this frustration what […]


Review of Unseen Hand by Adam Zagajewski

Posted on March 8, 2012

Unseen Hand by Adam Zagajewski (translated by Clare Cavanagh) Farrar, Straus and Giroux,  2011 $23.00 (hardback Reviewed by James Crews   In his latest collection, Unseen Hand, Adam Zagajewski once again interrogates the terrain of memory and aftermath, joy and pain, with his hard-won, welcome brand of ambivalence. In “Improvisation,” for instance, he writes: “Why […]