Review of Earth Again by Chris Dombrowski

Wayne State University Press, 2013 $15.95 paper Review by James Crews In Earth Again, Chris Dombrowski taps into our collective fears about the future of the planet and the ways in which we can and cannot connect as humans with the natural world. Dombrowski is the author of one previous collection, By Cold Water (Wayne […]

Review of THE DIRT RIDDLES by Michael Walsh

University of Arkansas Press, 2010  $16.00 reviewed by James Crews In the glut of poetry books being published these days, it’s easy for collections like Michael Walsh’s The Dirt Riddles to get lost in the shuffle. Perhaps it’s also easy in our current literary climate for poets who choose to write accessibly about the natural […]

Review of Paradise, Indiana by Bruce Snider

Pleiades Press, 2012 Softcover, $16.95 Reviewed by James Crews I highly recommend getting a hold of Bruce Snider’s latest collection of poems, Paradise, Indiana and reading it back-to-back with his first book, the Felix Pollak Prize-winning The Year We Studied Women, published in 2003 by the University of Wisconsin Press. These two volumes are not […]

Review of Touch by Henri Cole

Farrar, Straus, Giroux 2011 Hardcover, $23 by James Crews Henri Cole’s Touch is a dark but redemptive book. These poems—many of them sonnets—strike an elegiac, confessional tone as Cole reconstructs his personal history through memory, dreams and observations of the ordinary in the natural world. Touch builds upon the mastery already in full display in […]

Review of Forms and Hollows by Heather Dubrow

Cherry Grove Collections, 2011 Softcover $15 Reviewed by James Crews Heather Dubrow’s first collection of poetry, Forms and Hollows, opens with an extended elegy for her mother and makes use of a dizzying range of poetic forms—everything from sonnets and villanelles to a canzone and ghazal. These are some of the forms, of course, indicated […]

Review of On Speaking Terms by Connie Wanek

Copper Canyon Press, 2010 Softcover, $15.00 Reviewed by James Crews Every once in a while a book of poetry will fall into your hands and—perhaps not expecting much at first—you read it in one sitting, breathing a sigh of relief that you have discovered a new poet (new to you, at least) whose work actually […]

Review of The Salt Ecstasies by James L. White

The Salt Ecstasies by James L. White Graywolf Press Re/View Series, Soft,  $15 Reviewed by James Crews James L. White’s The Salt Ecstasies, recently re-issued by Graywolf Press for their wonderful new RE/VIEW Series, edited by Mark Doty, is more than just a gay classic; it’s a rich and rare book that has been out-of-print […]

Review of About the Dead by Travis Mossotti,

About the Dead by Travis Mossotti, Utah State University Press, Cloth $19.95 reviewed by James Crews In his 2011 May Swenson Award-winning first book, About the Dead, Travis Mossotti sketches a larger-than-life canvas for his readers, taking us from Van Gogh’s home in Arles, France to Aynor, South Carolina, to the Meramec River in “backwoods” […]

Review of Come, Thief by Jane Hirshfield

Come, Thief by Jane Hirshfield Knopf, Cloth $25 Reviewed by James Crews In her now-classic book of essays on the craft of poetry, Nine Gates, Jane Hirshfield writes, “Solitude, whether endured or embraced is a necessary gateway to original thought: only a writer who fears neither abandonment nor self-presence can write without distortion.” As one […]

Review of Double Shadow by Carl Phillips

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 […]