Review of Winterkill by Todd Davis

Michigan State University Press, 2016. $19.95 (paper) By James Crews The late poet and novelist, Jim Harrison (1937-2016) once said: “Poetry, at its best, is the language your soul would speak, if you could teach your soul to speak.” He might easily have been talking about Todd Davis, whose latest collections, In the Kingdom of […]

Review of The Beauty by Jane Hirshfield

Knopf, 2015 $19.94 (hardback) by James Crews There is some new and dazzling force at work in The Beauty, Jane Hirshfield’s latest and much-anticipated collection of poetry. Yet I must admit, I didn’t entirely appreciate the rawness and unpredictability of these poems at first. I have been a fan of Hirshfield’s for well over a […]

The Art of Losing: Love Lives of Elizabeth Bishop

Review by Scott Edward Anderson When telling someone else’s story – perhaps even one’s own – it is hard not to do so from a certain perspective or position. Two recent films whose subject is the poet Elizabeth Bishop provide examples of distinct storytelling approaches: the first, a documentary with a particular political slant; the […]