Poetry

Well-Traveled Verse: The Book of Poems You’ll Find Everywhere in India
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Well-Traveled Verse: The Book of Poems You’ll Find Everywhere in India

ByJohn Rufo

Indian bookstores come in wide varieties: street-sellers pitch copies of everything from tabloids to Freud, more upscale boutiques feature plastic-wrapped paperbacks in scholarly fields, and stuffed-to-the-brim cubicles at train depots deliver Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels beside worn editions of the Gita. But, without a doubt, I always came across copies of Vijay Seshadri’s 3 Sections. The…

THE NEUTRAL CORNER: Michael Hofmann’s “Where Have You Been?” And Gottfried Benn’s “Impromptus”
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THE NEUTRAL CORNER: Michael Hofmann’s “Where Have You Been?” And Gottfried Benn’s “Impromptus”

ByJohn Skoyles

The neutral corner is one of the two corners of the ring not used by boxers between rounds. It is also the corner a boxer must retreat to after he has floored his opponent. The Neutral Corner was also a bar in Saratoga Springs, New York, that I frequented when at Yaddo in the late…

Review: TWENTY THOUSAND PIGEONS by Justin Bigos
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Review: TWENTY THOUSAND PIGEONS by Justin Bigos

ByAmelia Hassani

Twenty Thousand PigeonsJustin BigosiO Press, 2014 When I think of twenty thousand pigeons, I think of Disney vacationsand city park picnics from childhood—precious memories ruined by grey birds pooping in my hair and stealing my French fries. But when I think of Twenty Thousand Pigeons, a stunning chapbook of poems by Justin Bigos, I’m instantly…

like a beggar book cover
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Review: LIKE A BEGGAR by Ellen Bass

ByEllen Duffer

Like a BeggarEllen BassCopper Canyon Press, March 201470 pages$16.00 Buy: book Exquisitely wrought in language and imagery, Ellen Bass’s third collection meditates on sequencing images. Her poems open in one place and close elsewhere. She signals this with titles that point toward the firsts and lasts, such as “The Beginning of the End” and “The Morning…