Grace Cavalieri's June 2019 Exemplars of Poetry

Every month for the Washington Independent Review of Books, the Maryland Poet Laureate, Grace Cavalieri, author of Other Voices, Other Lives, does a round-up style review of the best recently released independent books of poetry and books about poetry.

June 2019's review features fourteen books including two of ASP's upcoming releases, Reuben Jackson's Scattered Clouds and Linda Watanabe McFerrin's Navigating the Divide. Featured also are the likes of Tina Chang, Dobby Gibson, and rising star Sri-Lankan poet Indran Amirthanayagam whom Grace interviewed recently for her podcast "The Poet and The Poem" (recorded at the Library of Congress).

Read the full June 2019 round-up HERE on the WIRoB site

Indie publishers featured this month: Graywolf ; Mayapple Press ; Calliope Group ; Salmon Publishing ; Finishing Line Press ; Poetrywala ; Omnidawn Publishing ; Alan Squire Publishing

Below is excerpted Grace's review of Reuben Jackson's Scattered Clouds

"This whole book will give you a big love attack. Every poem is angelic and sexy, executed perfectly with Jackson’s own deity of words. He writes of human needs with sweet energy — there’s sadness, longing, racial injustice experienced; somehow this independent-minded poet aspires that we all be better than we are, and that shows up with feelings that connect just right with the lyric. It’s interesting that his poems are uniformly lean, narrow, often the size of a pocket comb, yet the meanings are rich enough to envelop the page. Jackson’s themes are family; his love and knowledge of music; the women and friends in his life; his own young self — all these are ordinary you might say, but you’ve never heard them treated quite this way. Let’s call it style, or a phenomenal spirit, or the power of the voice realized in simple line breaks. Whatever can be said about this book, Jackson makes words his own, and every page is a 10."