"A language of reviewing which might reach for phrases such as ‘beautifully controlled’, ‘body of work’, and a general slew of self-gratifying slippage between the verbal and the corporeal, is inadequate to Kingdom of Gravity." Vahni Capildeo on Nick Makoha The Compass
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Claudine Toutoungi Guardian
"Which is to say, I don’t think I had any grasp of the staggering range and history of British writing, apart from who made headlines or got attention in the United States because of awards or notoriety or big reviews. Zadie Smith and Simon Armitage are the only two names that immediately come to mind as I try to recall who I had heard of prior to arriving in London." R.A. Villanueva • Oxford Poetry
sam sax Gulf Coast
"Osip Mandelstam’s life and work are seamlessly united; his speeches and deeds form a singular impression of wholeness, of joyful integrity and inner freedom. “Everything has become heavier and more massive,” he wrote in his essay “On the Nature of the Word”; “thus man must become harder . . . the sacred character of poetry arises out of the conviction that man is harder than everything else in the world.” Osip demonstrated his own adamantine hardness—the “deep bedrock of principles,” in Nadezhda’s words, “which set him apart from anyone of his own or later generations”—when he meddled, on pain of death, in the case of an imprisoned art historian; when he intervened to save five old men facing execution, sending Bukharin a volume of his poetry with an inscription to the effect that “every word here is against what you are going to do”; and especially when, taking the measure of a Goliath like no other the world has ever seen, he weighed little stones of poetry—dense verses of formal power, earthy thematic richness, and striking imagery—against the immense totality of the USSR." Jacob Howland New Criterion
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Thom Gunn Poetry Archive
"I'm not sure where or when he gave his first poetry reading but he was no less nervous. Afraid that, if he took the time to read slowly and pause occasionally, he'd lose the audience, he rushed. He didn't want to sound too actorish, too Dylan Thomasy. He didn't like his voice, too high and thin; his accent, too English. It was a wonder, then, to witness the Extreme Makeover: he got to be so good! His voice was high and thin but its limitations allowed him to dramatize just enough." Mike Kitay Threepenny Review
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Leontia Flynn Poetry Ireland Review
"The long eponymous poem is a masterful depiction of motherhood during the Troubles as a perpetually heightened state of vigilance and vulnerability. The quiet “rhythms of a culchie life” on the farm are disturbed suddenly and repeatedly by the jarring words broadcast on the radio, which seems to come alive in the poem’s opening: “The radio hoots and mutters, hoots and mutters / out of the dark, each morning of my childhood.”" Dawn Miranda Sherratt-Bado DRB
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"“I am ashamed to say I do not understand the poem clearly,” my student wrote. When I write back to her, I offer explanations about confusing lines and send her articles on Modernism and symbolism and World War I, but I also tell her there is no need to feel ashamed." Emily Frisella • The Rumpus
"Much of Zagajewski’s mulling takes place on his long walks around the city. He shares his bibliography for walking, recommending Italian poet Eugenio Montale, Greek diplomat and poet George Seferis, the Czech poet Vladimir Holan. One can almost hear his Polish-accented drawl as he writes, “And so we live, torn between brief explosions of meaning and patient wandering through the plains of ordinary days.”" Cynthia Haven Weekly Standard
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Amina Saïd, tr Marilyn Hacker Words Without Borders
"In part three of the poem, (Sarah) Arvio comes up with an interesting solution when she translates the fifth line as “I have seen the gray rain chase the waves” (Kinnell translates this as “I’ve seen gray rains fleeing toward the sea” and Spender and Gili’s version is “I have seen grey showers move towards the waves”). Arvio’s single-syllable words suggest panic; in the meter, it sounds like a good line of English poetry—T.S. Eliot might have been proud of it—rather than a translation. Since both the rain and the waves are in movement, “chase” serves to emphasize this and suggests also that something urgent is at stake, even if in the original Spanish the rain is running away from something as well as running toward the sea." Colm Toibin NYRB
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"Whitman, long recognized for his candid treatment of the body and sexuality, was also the quintessential poet of disability and death. As a volunteer nurse in the Civil War hospitals in Washington, D.C., he visited, according to his own estimate, between 80,000 and 100,000 wounded or sick soldiers over the course of four years." David S. Reynolds • NYRB
Adam Crothers Manchester Review
"People presume there is a lot of structure in this structure because I think some of the best poetry I have ever read, it goes beyond the bounds of standard grammar. But when you know the grammar really well you can utilise what you like to get the message across." Joe Schmidt Irish Times
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"In the far future, when the only readers who cherish and puzzle over Lucie Brock-Broido’s poems are those who never met her, those readers will surely try to imagine what she must have been like in person." Stephanie Burt • Paris Review
"The last time I saw Lucie was at the Star Market in Porter Square. She had called me a few weeks earlier to say she had a brain tumor and was dying. She said it in the same way as she had said many things over the last thirty-plus years, with characteristic theatricality." Askold Melnyczuk • Agni