LET THE DEAD IN Receives Glowing Review in Lightwood Press #10
"Agostini’s socially and spiritually aware poetry collection 'Let the Dead In' focuses on the duality between love and hate along with the way that these concepts integrate and clash"
Poet Robyn Hager reviews Saida Agostini's daring first collection let the dead in in the 10th edition of Lightwood. In her review, Hager praises Agostini's social and spiritual awareness as she contends with the violence and oppression facing black people in the United States. Below, read a small excerpt. Read the entire review in Lightwood's new issue here. Order let the dead in here.
Agostini successfully juxtaposes stark images from her life with deeply entrancing metaphors, and most poignantly in her poem "what love is" she compares the images of turmoil she witnesses between her parents with a dead buck on the side of the road whose
flesh ripped/exposing a dark black machine/so soft, stinking and fragile that years/later you’ll remember the risk of loving/something that wild
The author’s ability to display these powerful, and sometimes gruesome, epithets about life shines through in the entirety of her collection.
Talking Jazz and Rock with Poet Reuben Jackson (Laura Ritchie)
Author and music educator Lauren Ritchie sat down with ASP’s Reuben Jackson this week to talk jazz with the man himself. Reuben’s music credentials are long and impressive, from curating the Duke Ellington Collection at the Smithsonian to hosting a weekly Jazz radio show for NPR Vermont, to his poetry which takes inspiration from and frequently comments on the American Jazz idiom. Listen to or read the interview…
Rose Solari talks with Acclaimed Poet David Gewanter
This Sunday, October 21, at 8 p.m., ASP’s Rose Solari is reading with acclaimed poet, essayist, editor, and professor David Gewanter in a new poetry reading series at Second Story Books, 2000 P Street NW, Washington DC. In preparation for their reading, Rose talked with David about his work, particularly his most recent collection, Fort Necessity. Here is a part of their discussion…
Featured Audio: “Margaret in Oxford,” a Reading by Rose Solari
Robert Olen Butler loved Rose’s debut work of fiction for its sense of the eternity. This is one of many reasons why all of Rose Solari’s work must be treasured. It plays on life motifs, flips, forms, and languors upon the archetypes formed of human experience. We have spoken previously of Rose’s reverence for the myth in modern day. We even looked before at A Secret Woman’s sense of itself as being both poem and novel…