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.

This is November 2018’s and you can find her full review HERE on the WIRoB site

And don’t forget to support your indies!

Here is an excerpt, a review of The Book of Sharks by Rob Carney from Black Lawrence Press (What an awesome job they did with the cover art on this one. Wow!)

The Book of Sharks by Rob Carney. Black Lawrence Press, 65 pages.

I can’t think of another writer who honors the shark as the driving dream of a poet’s consciousness. This is the way Carney explains the world — philosophically, environmentally, and emotionally. We learn about the shark in its actuality and we learn about the creature as a life energy — scientific and poetic, accurate and dreamlike. Carney has found a form and context for his own journey. Uniformly stunning couplets unfold an impeccable story. And at the heart, the storyteller is an American boy telling a tale of great range and true hearted poems in tasteful commentary.

The cousin of a shark is a manta ray;
and the cousin of a manta ray, a hawk;

and the cousin of a hawk is lightning, the ocean reborn,
returned skyward and alive with storm;

and the cousin of storms is a waterfall;
and the cousin of falling is the wind;

and the cousin of wind is erosion
leaving rock, the bones of the mountains, scattered;

and the cousin of the mountains is a row of teeth,
and another, and another behind;

and those teeth are the cousin of the manta ray,
lightning, the wind…