Challenge and Ambition: Rose Solari Releases new Poetry Reviews for WIRoB
Rose Solari's reviews this month focus on four collections that "challenge and stretch the reader’s expectations in terms of content, form, or both."

Rose Solari's reviews this month concern books that "challenge and stretch the reader’s expectations in terms of content, form, or both." This includes Charlotte Pence's vitalizing Code with its centerfold poem written entirely in DNA, Kelvin Corcoran's The Republic of Song with its tributes to the scholar and poet Lee Harwood, Lauren Camp's soft poems based on visual artists of the 20th century in Took House, and the singular obsession with form presented in Peter Kline's Mirrorforms.
As always, Rose Solari writes with generosity and specificity when recounting the challenges and triumphs of each work. It is important also to note something unique to her reviews: her ear for the music of poetry. Solari never leaves the reader wanting for descriptions of concord and discord.
Rose Solari's is a monthly poetry review column for the Washington Independent Review of Books. You can find more of her reviews HERE.
Solari, while an excellent reviewer of poetry, is herself a regarded poet. Check out her work HERE.
Reflections on my First AWP; or, Sleepless in SeaTac
ASP Intern and Washington College Senior Eylie Sasajima on Her First AWP Conference
An interview with the late, great Linda Pastan
Along the indifferent corridors / of space, angels could be hiding,” Linda Pastan wrote in her poem “Muse.” ASP honors the legacy of Linda Pastan (1932–2023), a former Poet Laureate of Maryland, who passed away last week. Pastan was the author of the 2018 poetry book A Dog Runs Through It, which won the Towson University Literary Award.
Here’s to 2022! And Here’s a Sale…
2022 was a big year for ASP and our writers. In March, we had a booth at the annual AWP Conference, and our offsite reading, featuring authors Saida Agostini, Dave Housley, Elizabeth Hazen, and Richard Peabody, along with special guests Teri Ellen Cross Davis and Leslie Pietrzyk, had a standing-room-only audience packed with literary stars.