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.
Featured Poetry: “Burial at Shanidar” by Elizabeth Hazen
This is no modern tradition, says Elizabeth Hazen. It is not only now that humans ornament their dead with flowers. “See,” she says in her rumination on tradition and humanity, Burial at Shanidar, “Even from a distance we dream of gardens where there should be stone.” And on Christmas especially, it is so wonderful to curl up with a book of poetry, even to read out-loud to one’s family, and bask in the ways we make words, just like the long winter days of dark, meaningful with light and tradition.
Mark A. Pritchard Reads from His Novel, “Billy Christmas”
It’s that time of year again. As I’m sure you know. That time of year to rediscover all those things one loves and yet stores in boxes during the sunnier months–ornaments, heirlooms, wax statues, wreaths, and the classics. And although one should not consider Billy Christmas a novel pigeon-held by its festive nature, for it is good any day of the year, (as are the classics!) we are so happy the holiday season is here to give us an opportunity to promote Mark A. Pritchard’s incredible young adult novel.
Grace Cavalieri’s November 2018 Exemplars of Poetry
Every month for the Washington Independent Review of Books, the amazing Maryland Poet 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…