New Review of Girls Like Us: The Collection "Bulges with Debilitating Last Lines"
"The surprise-suplex-onto-concrete, knock-the-air-out-of-you kind of debilitating. Hazen is even dastardly enough to look the reader in the eye, then hook them with the very first last line: 'We’ve been called so many things that we are not, we startle at the sound of our own names.'"
In Lannie Stabile's new review of Elizabeth Hazen's second collection Girls Like Us, she raves about the effect of Hazen's "last lines." Girls Like Us, she says, is "bulging with debilitating last lines." Like this one in the opening poem "Devices," that Stabile points to as like a "hook," “We’ve been called so many things that we are not, we startle at the sound of our own names.”
Stabile's review appears in The Poetry Question which seeks to lift the voices of small press poetry. Stabile is the Managing Editor at Barren Magazine and is a member of the MMPR Collective.
Girls Like Us is Hazen's second collection of poems after Chaos Theories (2016).
Katherine E. Young Describes Writing of Occasional Poem “Women’s Work” for Swearing-In of Libby Garvey
“What I found was: almost nothing. In fact, I discovered very few recent poems about public service or public servants in general, and no poems celebrating women in public service.”
Reuben Jackson Makes Banshee Press’ 2020 Best Short Readings List
Jackson’s poetry cycle, “Kelly’s Love for Waltzes” (published by Boston Review) is chosen by Jaydn Dewald for the year-end list.
John Doe of Band X Recalls his Time Studying Under Grace Cavalieri
The punk-rocker, like so many others, discovered poetry through Grace Cavalieri. She offers some sound advice for aspiring readers.