Review of Dear Z: The Zygote Epistles by Diane Raptosh

Posted on July 20, 2020

Reviewed by Melissa Kwasny Etruscan Press, 2020. Paperback, 116 pages. $17.00. Conceive: to plan or devise a plan in the mind, or, in biological terms, to become pregnant, as with a child. But what does it mean to be conceived, and a larger question, to be conceived 200,000 years ago as a separate species—with an astonishingly […]


Review of Where Outside the Body Is the Soul Today by Melissa Kwasny

Posted on September 4, 2019

University of Washington Press, hardback, 96 pages, $19.95 Reviewed by Tami Haaland Inspired by Christopher Howell’s ecstatic poem “Another Letter to the Soul,” Melissa Kwasny’s Where Outside the Body Is the Soul Today is a careful examination of the self, the natural world, the spirit and soul woven through with an awareness of language and […]


Review of What Does Not Return by Tami Haaland

Posted on September 4, 2019

Lost Horse Press, Paperback, 78 pages. $18.00. Reviewed by Melissa Kwasny Poetry has been described as the art of speaking the unspeakable. In some cases, the unspeakable is that which seems almost too horrific to put into words. Sometimes it is that the state of being is too nuanced, the feeling too fleeting, the insight […]