Brent Cunningham Ugly Duckling Presse ($10) by Amanda Nadelberg As magical and lovely on the inside as its wonderful 1970's kitchen-green cover suggests, Brent Cunningham's Bird & Forest transforms itself from declarative orations to stunningly self-conscious meditations and then turns again, the poems becoming portraits of people and animals. All of this happens seamlessly, on account of […]

Heather Nagami Chax Press ($15) by Kenny Tanemura Heather Nagami's debut, Hostile, is an anomaly among first books by an Asian American poet, or any young poet writing today. While many young Asian American poets leap over the now unfashionable “identity work,” only to come up with generic lyrics about generic topics—as if streamlining is the […]

Major Jackson W.W. Norton & Company ($23.95) by Lynnell Edwards I read Major Jackson's new book Hoops in the week between the end of the AWP conference and the beginning of college basketball's annual furor, March Madness. And this mid-frenzy caesura seems like exactly the right place to appreciate Jackson's struggle in this latest book, pulled between […]

By Kevin Kilroy A transmutation of the boundaries between poetics and prose seems to be occurring, and Mary Burger's various work demonstrates how this activity affects far more than just literary vocabulary, but rather extends to our everyday relationships in and perceptions of the outside world. Sonny, (Leon Works, $12.95) her most recent book, opens doors for […]

By Thomas Devaney Sparrow is a poet and prose provocateur best known as a folk hero and poet-journalist in New York City's East Village and the Woodstock area of the Catskills, where he currently lives with his wife and daughter. Publishing in local newspapers and smaller magazines such as Chronogram and The Sun, and occasionally crossing-over into mainstream publications […]