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Four Aunties and a Wedding by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Source: public library
Hardcover, 304 pgs.
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Four Aunties and a Wedding by Jesse Q. Sutanto bring the aunties together with Meddy, Nathan, and Nathan’s family. The wedding plans are under way and it’s a destination wedding to Oxford, England. For some reason I went into this sequel just assuming there would be another murder. Not sure why, perhaps it was the description and the mention of the mafia.

This wedding is being planned down to the minute details, but one choice could have her wedding on the cover of the news. As Meddy gets closer to her own wedding photographer, Staphanie, and her family, similarities emerge between their immigration stories and how they interact with each other and the world around them. Meddy feels a kinship to Staph (unfortunate name, indeed), but what she find outs could upend not only her new friendship, but also the entire wedding.

“Toodle pip, cheerio!”

I turn to Nathan in a panic. “I think she’s having a stroke.”

Sutanto has a gift for comedy. Her over-the-top story lines are a bit unbelievable, but her comedic timing keeps readers turning the pages. When Meddy’s aunts adopt a British accent on the plan to the destination wedding, you can just imagine what kinds of slip ups and misunderstandings are going to happen with Nathan’s uptight, unsuspecting parents. I love all of these characters from the blood thirsty aunties to the bumbling and naive Meddy. Nathan is even lovable in all his forgiving glory.

Four Aunties and a Wedding by Jesse Q. Sutanto is another entertaining read with a crazy cast of characters. I definitely recommend reading these books in order. You want some laughs, Sutanto is your author. I laughed out loud so many times reading this, my husband thought I was losing it.

RATING: Quatrain

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About the Author:

Jesse Q Sutanto grew up shuttling back and forth between Jakarta and Singapore and sees both cities as her homes. She has a Masters degree from Oxford University, though she has yet to figure out a way of saying that without sounding obnoxious. She is currently living back in Jakarta on the same street as her parents and about seven hundred meddlesome aunties. When she’s not tearing out her hair over her latest WIP, she spends her time baking and playing FPS games. Oh, and also being a mom to her two kids.

Thank You For Listening by Julia Whelan (audio)

Source: Borrowed
Audiobook, 11+ hrs.
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Thank You for Listening by Julia Whelan, narrated by the author, is my 5th book in the 12 books, 12 friends reading challenge, and it was the perfect book for my state of mind. Sewanee Chester, successful audiobook narrator and former actress, is worried about her grandmother’s health and disease’s progression, is in a battle of wills with her father over decisions related to his mother’s care, and continues to hide in the audio booth from how her life has changed and shaped who she is now.

In Las Vegas, filling in for her boss at a convention, Sewanee is thrust into the thick of romance narration as a panel moderator, which forces her to confront her own misgivings about HEA (happily ever after). It also forces her to see herself as something more than broken when she finds herself entangled with a strange and charming man. “What happens in Vegas….”

Once a narrator of romance, Sewanee has moved to meatier reads and won awards, but when an industry icon in the romance genre’s dying wish is to have her narrate her last book with steamy and mysterious Brock McNight, she’s unsure. After a bit of convincing and wishing for a return to her old life as an actress, Sewanee sets forth on a journey of rediscovering herself and learning to tap into her own emotional center. This is a romance, but it is as much a journey of healing and discovery. I laughed aloud while listening so many times, and I really felt these characters’ development and movement past pain and disappointment. There definitely is an HEA, but it’s more like Hope in Everything Always.

Thank You for Listening by Julia Whelan was a delight! It was the perfect book for where I was emotionally and in terms of stress levels. I had an entertaining read to fall into just when I needed it, and Whelan as a narrator is superb. I’m not sure who recommended this book, but it was a winner, and I thank you!

RATING: Cinquain

About the Author:

Having narrated over 400 audiobooks in all genres, Julia Whelan is, by industry standards, considered one of the top narrators recording today. She’s repeatedly featured on Audiofile Magazine’s annual Best-Of Lists. She was named Audible’s Narrator of the Year in 2014 and is a Grammy-nominated audiobook director. She has acquired multiple Audies and SOVAS (Society of Voice Arts) Awards, including for the performance of her own novel, My Oxford Year. She has won dozens of Earphone Awards, The Audie Award for Best Female Narrator of 2019, and was presented with Audiofile Magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Golden Voice Award in 2020. She attributes her distinctive style of narration to her ongoing passion for literature fueled by her decades of acting experience.

 

Bargaining with the Fall by Alison Palmer

Source: Purchased
Paperback, 80 pgs.
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Bargaining with the Fall by Alison Palmer is a deeply personal collection about loss, grief, and the impact it has on those left behind. The opening poem, “The Sky Only Teaches Me Uncertainty,” sets the tone for the collection, a struggle with debilitating grief and uncertainty, a deep enveloping emptiness left by a departed father. The poet says, “I’m a done-in-soul without you.” Grief is like that. All consuming and seems never-ending, which it is, though the grief does change over time.

Imagine grief before a loss, watching a loved one struggle to survive. “I start to breathe like you; water moves/over your gills in my mind. I implore myself, stop//pacing, but I already saw you die/once.” (“Your Memory Moves in Me Like a Shark Must”, pg.8) Grief in memory, grief in the moment, grief as it happens. Emotions are unexpected and invasive.

Salvation (pg. 31)

What more could you have done to obey; the sum
of your parts down to zero: I'm reduced to photographs—

              from the corner of your eye, reverence,
      for what? Rusted nails, your weight, wooden staircase—

I don't bend my knees in prayer, next to you, I don't
believe you'll be protected: such guttural sounds—Oh,

             Lord or Anyone listening? Deliverance gets lost
      along the way, the ambulance arrives an hour later—

Faith in the body owes us nothing; we can't all be
spared: the night you fall, the night falls with you—

             your blue eyes, the only beacons that speak
      to me. I'm startled by how little they say—

As the poet moves through the collection, we’re taken on a journey to make sense of tragic, unexpected loss. It’s a hard road of what-ifs and surprise, even as the poet seeks to use an equation to understand it in “Behind the Conglomerate, a Backbone?” There is no understanding this kind of tragedy; it is unknowable, like grief, until you live it. Bargaining with the Fall by Alison Palmer is as heart-wrenching as it is beautiful in its questioning of loss and grief and what hollows it leaves behind. This collection has come at a very appropriate time in my life. Do not miss this collection.

RATING: Cinquain

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About the Poet:

Alison Palmer is the author of the forthcoming full-length poetry collection, Bargaining with the Fall (Broadstone Books, March 2023), the recently published poetry chapbook, Everything Is Normal Here (Broadstone Books, 2022), and the poetry chapbook, The Need for Hiding (Dancing Girl Press, 2018). To read an interview with Alison visit: www.thepoetsbillow.org. She was named a semi-finalist for 92Y’s Discovery Poetry Contest 2021 and was chosen for a 2022 Independent Artist Award (IAA) grant by the Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC).

Alison received her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, and she was awarded the Emma Howell Memorial Poetry Prize from Oberlin College where she graduated with a BA in Creative Writing. Currently, Alison writes outside Washington, DC.

Her Whole Bright Life by Courtney LeBlanc

Source: the Poet
Paperback, 100 pgs.
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Her Whole Bright Life by Courtney LeBlanc is a collection of rolling grief and healing. In the opening poem, “Self-Portrait,” the narrator speaks to the collections of past memories that are part of her being and how they make her feel about herself, but by the end, the living in the moment and in the past, have left her without a sense of who she wishes to be in the future. There’s an unsettled-ness in this poem that sets the tone for the rest of the collection and the roiling emotions that come through each subsequent poem.

In “I Don’t Understand Black Holes No Matter How Many Times Cody Explains Them to Me,” the poet speaks to the immense and unexplainable black hole, noting “For now, I’ll just accept/that black holes exist, that they are closer/than we previously thought, and that they/are a force so powerful, every mistake I ever/made would be swallowed by them.//” Her regrets seem large and able to swallow her hole, which explains why she sees black holes as a potential force that can make those regrets disappear.

Grief takes many forms in this collection. It is not just the slow loss of a vibrant father who dedicated himself to farming and gardening and his daughter, but it’s also the slow losses we don’t see until we lose a parent. We are no longer those children we were, life has shaped us. We’ve become someone else and yet still carry that younger self with us and long for what we see as a simpler existence without regret and loss.

From "Snails and Stars" (pg. 41)

...
Last year, a friend took a bottle of pills and went
to sleep. At his memorial we watched
the slideshow, his smiling face in every frame,
the galaxy of his friends spilling onto the lawn.
We are a constellation of caring, but we were not
enough to save him.
...

Her Whole Bright Life by Courtney LeBlanc is somber and full of life — its funny moments, its sad emotions and grief, and its unexpected gifts. LeBlanc is fast becoming one of my favorite poets. Her turn of phrase, her bravery in the face of deep emotional turmoil, and her ability to connect seemingly unconnected events into a poem that you can find your own story inside. Don’t miss this collection.

Other Reviews:

About the Poet:

Courtney LeBlanc is the author of the full-length collections, “Her Whole Bright Life” (winner of the Jack McCarthy Book Prize, Write Bloody, 2023), “Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart” (Riot in Your Throat, 2021) and “Beautiful & Full of Monsters” (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2020). She is a Virginia Center for Creative Arts fellow (2022) and the founder and editor-in-chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press. She loves nail polish, tattoos and a soy latte each morning.

Lo: Poems by Melissa Crowe

Source: Publisher
Paperback, 88 pgs.
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Lo: Poems by Melissa Crowe, 2022 Iowa Poetry Prize winner to be published in May 2023, is an expression of grief, longing, and joy all at once as the young girl growing up within these poems and pages finds that the world is all at once beautiful and ugly. This song echoes throughout the collection from the opening poem, “The Self Says, I Am,” readers will see the whimsical imagination of a young girl surrounded by a rural landscape, but within that landscape blisters and sunburn can form, causing a young girl to learn to be “nimble” and “learned.”

The narrator of “Thrownness” says, “Maybe home is what gets on you and can’t//be shaken loose.” Taking the lighters side of that observation it is clear Crowe’s roots in Maine are still with her in the imagery she chooses, but on the flip side of that, the darkest parts of our childhood lives leave indelible scars. “Remember how every branch/on that same street seemed blessed with fat red berries/your mother said would make you sick and how — always/hungry, cupboards bare — you would not stop tasting them/anyway.” (pg. 5-6)

In many of these early poems, a young girl is yearning and she cannot get enough, even when what she receives is not necessarily the best thing for her. She is loved, but there are parts of her story that include attention, not necessarily love. Part 3 of this collection houses a variety of poem structures that tell a traumatic tale, and each mirrors the emotional state of the narrator. (be advised these can be triggering) “Thank god I thought, burning,/somebody will ask me. Nobody asked me.//Thank god I thought, burning, knowing/for the first time maybe what he’d//done to me, that what he’d done to me was/wrong enough to go to jail for, if you told.//” (“When She Speaks of the Fire,” pg. 30) This is where the reader weeps for this girl. You cannot help but weep. It is because the narrator is speaking directly to the reader, even if it’s framed as spoken to someone else. You are drawn in, you are “watching through a crack as thick as a man’s/fingers what unfolds beyond your power/to undo.”

Lo: Poems by Melissa Crowe is not focused just on the trauma and telling of it; it is the emotional journey of telling it and learning how to navigate the debris and the disappointment with loved ones who were supposed to protect you and didn’t/couldn’t and didn’t want to speak aloud about it even when it is clearly needed for healing. Another not-to-be-missed collection; pre-order it now.

RATING: Cinquain

About the Poet:

Melissa Crowe is a poet, editor, and teacher. She was born in Presque Isle, Maine, but she currently lives with her family by the sea in Wilmington, North Carolina. Crowe is an assistant professor of Creative Writing and Coordinator of the MFA program at UNCW. Her first full-length collection, Dear Terror, Dear Splendor was published by University of Wisconsin Press in 2019, and her second book, Lo, won the Iowa Poetry Prize and is due out from the University of Iowa Press in May 2023.

In Kind by Maggie Queeney

Source: Publisher
Paperback, 98 pgs.
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In Kind by Maggie Queeney, 2022 Iowa Poetry Prize winner to be published in May 2023, calls on the goddesses of old to illuminate the struggles of today. She deftly deals with trauma in a way that captures the darkness, the struggle, and the strength to move forward honoring that wound that makes up part of the whole person. In “My Given Name,” “Grit both the middle and the start of it://A bit of sand or shell shard, the hard/Speck of stone or flint or bone or beak—/What cannot be broken back//Into nothing, but offers an ever/Smaller division: this is what made me/What I am: Mar—as in mark, as in wound,//” (pg. 4)

Throughout her poems, transformation is taking place. Everything is unsettled in these poems, and it can be hard to get your bearings, but that’s to be expected given the subject matter (which those who have experienced trauma may want to consider before reading these poems). “We sang ourselves new bodies/the volume of our old hearts/” says the narrator in “Metamorphosis: The Daughters of Minyas Deny Ecstasy, Transform into Bats.”And in “A Charm, A Series of Survivals,” the narrator says, “He wrote his yes into my silence.” (pg. 21) Queeney demonstrates that old myths have something to teach us about punishments meted out to those who fail to conform to society’s expectations. They are unjust and harsh, but they also can become empowering enabling survivors to leverage those punishments as fuel in their own transformations and blossoming.

***(this is a graphic poem)*** Read the title poem, “In Kind,” at underbelly. It’s where I first saw Queeney’s work, and the differences between her draft poem and the final are amazing. Her poem builds from the rapping of the window washers’ ropes against the window, which take on the life of the traumatic memories, and these memories continue to haunt as the time passes and the narrator moves forward in the poem. The poem is not only about the witness and their trauma, but about the trauma of the victim who takes the actions leading to the witness’ trauma. It folds in on itself in a tragic way to remind us that “Nothing, and/no one ever enough.” Nothing could have prevented this tragedy. That’s the most hopeless moment in anyone’s life — knowing nothing you could have done would have saved a person you loved.

In Kind by Maggie Queeney is a deep exploration of trauma and transformation. It never shies away from the harsh realities and emotions of trauma, but it does seek to highlight the wounds can heal and be transformed into something that drives an individual’s healing and purpose. Do not miss this collection; pre-order it now.

RATING: Cinquain

About the Poet:

Maggie Queeney is the author of In Kind, winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize, forthcoming in 2023, and settler (Tupelo Press). She is recipient of the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize, the Ruth Stone Scholarship, and two IAP Grants from the City of Chicago. Her poems, stories, and hybrid works have been published widely. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University.

Elegies for an Empire by Le Hinton

Source: the poet
Paperback, 65 pgs.
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***A portion of the purchase price of Hinton’s book ($15) will go to the Lancaster Cleft Palate Clinic.***

Elegies for an Empire by Le Hinton, is a gorgeous collection of poems paying homage to parents, ancestors, and others who came before, while realizing that the foundations and moments the poet leaves behind for children will be similarly in the past, even as they are present. In each step forward, there is an echo of the past, like his opening quote says from Ralph Ellison, “The end is the beginning and lies far ahead.” In the opening poem, “Asking for my Mother,” there’s the echo of a mother’s voice, urging the speaker to not only think on the past as a lesson, but to also employ it in a humble way. There’s a tension between doing something and praying about it, while at the same time, there is the urge to do something, move forward because one is praying about it.

Second Chance (pg. 18)

I carry my family's dreams
into this soil's darkness.

Inside this pod, I hold these hopes:

a fresh garden,
a tender lunar spring,
a faultless reputation.

No one here can sing my past

There is a sense of lament in each of these poems, but carried inside it is a hope that cannot be contained. Rise from the soil to build a garden anew, sit alongside the spirits of your ancestors to learn the past and how to navigate the future. These meditations signal to the reader that the hustle and bustle of our lives needn’t be the only driver of our action or inaction.

Hinton is tackling topics that we see on the news every day, and not all of us live in that reality but are mere observers. The question I come away with is: Why are you sitting idly on your hands and observing when you can take action to make change? Do all Black men have to have internal conversations about death when stopped by police? Is there a way to remedy this issue without more violence? How can we think our way out and take action?

The entire collection is not about darkness, death, and loss. There is love here. “Still Life with Desire,” shows us that even while masked and left with unspoken words, lovers can create something beautiful just as “Beethoven composing/his 9th within the enveloping silence.” (pg. 39) Elegiac song fills the air when so much is lost, but what about the things we’ve gained. “Consider your good fortune to have survived/a virus that has no conscience or taste buds/and disregards the pleasures of a lengthened life//Then peel the skin, slowly, intentionally,/noticing the tiny movement of flesh/beneath your fingers, the initial droplets//of the sweetest of juices.” (pg. 41, “How to Eat a Peach During a Pandemic”).

Elegies for an Empire by Le Hinton reminds everyone about the importance of connection to ourselves, to one another, to our ancestors, and yes, even to our enemies. In “Allies and Ancestors”, the poet says, “we’ll recycle these deaths/over again and again and over.” The energy of us never leaves. We are all still here, still connecting, still influencing.

RATING: Cinquain

About the Poet:

Poet, teacher, Le Hinton, is the author of seven collections including, most recently, Elegies for an Empire (Iris G. Press, 2023). His work has been widely published and can, or will be found in The Best American Poetry 2014, the Baltimore Review, The Skinny Poetry Journal, the Progressive Magazine, Little Patuxent Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere. His poem “Epidemic” won the Baltimore Review’s 2013 Winter Writers Contest and in 2014 it was honored by The Pennsylvania Center for the Book. His poem, “Our Ballpark,” can be found outside Clipper Magazine Stadium in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, incorporated into Derek Parker’s sculpture Common Thread.

He is the founder and co-editor of the poetry journal Fledgling Rag and the founder of Iris G. Press/I. Giraffe Press.

The Poet Who Loves Pythagoras by Fran Abrams

Source: Purchased
Paperback, 23 pgs.
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The Poet Who Loves Pythagoras by Fran Abrams is a delight. If you love math or don’t, it won’t matter as Abrams’ wry wit and precise storytelling will tickle your humor bone. She espouses her love of Pythagoras and his math in the opening poem, but she also has a few things to say about his philosophies. We all can’t be perfect, right?

What I love about Abrams’ work is that she can take the every day things we see and feel and make them new. Imagine the poem “Triangle” and see how Abrams transforms it into a poem about trysts and how people must have confused them with the word truss, one of the strongest architectural elements used. She juxtaposes the strength of the triangle with the instability of the tryst in just 7 stanzas.

Triangle (pg. 2)

the strongest shape
used in bridges and in trusses
to support floors and roofs

compression on legs
balanced by tension
across the base

difficult to break unless
one of the sides cracks—
then why is a love triangle

the same shape as a truss
how strong can it be
when it's made of two men

who love one woman or two women
who love one man or some other arrangement
of three not supposed to be in love

how long before one side
of the triangle will crack
causing the structure to fail

the answer becomes evident only
when someone realizes
they have confused tryst with truss

Her chapbook uses the base of math to explore our lives, making astute observations on love, family, and so much more. The Poet Who Loves Pythagoras by Fran Abrams is not to be missed.

RATING: Cinquain

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About the Poet:

Fran Abrams lives in Rockville, MD. She holds an undergraduate degree in art and architecture and a master’s degree in urban planning. For 41 years, she worked in government and nonprofit agencies in Montgomery County, MD, where her work involved writing legislation, regulations, memos, and reports.

In 2000, before she retired, she began working as a visual artist. Then, after retiring in 2010, she devoted the majority of her time to her art. After attending a poetry reading in 2017, she realized she missed expressing herself in words and began taking creative writing classes at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD, where she concentrated on writing poetry. In September 2017, she traveled to Italy on a poetry retreat that strengthened her commitment to writing poems. She now devotes the most of her time to writing poetry.

Since 2017, her poems have been published online and in print in Cathexis-Northwest Press, The American Journal of Poetry, MacQueen’s Quinterly Literary Magazine, The Raven’s Perch, Gargoyle 74, and others. In 2019, she was a juried poet at Houston (TX) Poetry Fest and a featured reader at DiVerse Gaithersburg (MD) Poetry Reading. Her poems appear in more than a dozen anthologies, including the 2021 collection titled This is What America Looks Like from Washington Writers Publishing House (WWPH). In December 2021, she won the WWPH Winter Poetry Prize for her poem titled “Waiting for Snow.” Her first chapbook, titled “The Poet Who Loves Pythagoras,” is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Her first full-length manuscript, titled “I Rode the Second Wave: A Feminist Memoir,” is out now from Atmosphere Press.

You Cannot Save Here by Tonee Moll

Source: Publisher
Paperback, 84 pgs.
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You Cannot Save Here by Tonee Moll, winner of the Washington Writer’s Publishing House‘s 2022 Jean Feldman Poetry Prize, opens with a quote from Ocatvia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, which sets the stage for the whole collection. Moll’s poems are about every day moments that each of us can relate to, such as days in which we have little energy to perform even the simplest tasks or are exasperated with the search for love and acceptance. The collection points to the gradual wearing down of ourselves.

In the first poem, “You Cannot Save Here,” the narrator begins with “the first day of The End,” which sets up readers for the journey through the apocalypse of life. “I don’t do anything just/sit in the dimness of midday/room with unopened blinds” Think about it, would we really know when the end comes? Do we even know when our end is near or that death has come for us? Not usually. This theme of not knowing if it is the end permeates the poems in this collection where the narrator realizes in “If You See Me, Weep” that lyrics about the end of the world and it “being later than you think” have been sung for decades.

Not only is Moll calling us to task about our obsessions with the end of the world and the death of ourselves, but he also is urging us to “be a whole oak enveloped in kind potential.” (“Fruit of the Unenclosed Land”). Through the title poems (yes, multiple poems are titled “You Cannot Save Here”), readers are immersed in the apocalypses that populate our lives. Humans are such dramatic creatures. Moll is meditating on what it means when we’ve past the point of no return and how do we live with where we are. But don’t expect all of these poems to be dark and dreary, because they are far from that.

You Cannot Save Here by Tonee Moll is a light in the darkness, teaching us to see what we have and rejoice in that moment. The collection asks what is our potential and how can we achieve it, despite our apocalyptic perspective.

RATING: Cinquain

About the Author:

Tonee Moll is a queer poet, essayist and educator. Tonee holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts and a Ph.D. in English. They are the author of “Out of Step: A Memoir,” which won the Lambda Literary Award and the Non/Fiction Collection Prize. Their latest book, “You Cannot Save Here,” won the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House. They live in Baltimore, and they teach creative writing & literature as an assistant professor of English at Harford Community College.

Dear Selection Committee by Melissa Studdard

Source: Jackleg Press
Paperback, 132 pgs.
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Dear Selection Committee by Melissa Studdard is a poetry collection that will have you on your toes, make you gape in awe, and have you wishing you kept some of your own boldness on the surface. These are poems of empowerment. In the opening poem, “Dear Selection Committee,” readers will see immediately that Studdard is bold and ready to ask for what she wants, whether it is a corner office or the ability to drink chardonnay when she wants.

In “My Kind,” the narrator says, “I’m building a life/out of sad songs, good friends, and leftover microwavable food./It occurs to me that I may be my own soul mate. That’s how I’ve/ended up in this body alone.” While there is a great deal of socialization, Studdard also brings to the forefront the inner life and loneliness of this persona. How do you fill those voids you experience? With friends, good food, pets? In “Untitled,” her persona’s “address is nostalgia/for things that never happened. I wander in/and out of coincidence, dragging a wagonful/of unrequited lovers behind me.” and later the persona says, “Oh — what we embrace/to avoid the life we’ve been given…Generate/a disaster in your life to sidestep/the true catastrophe of your life.”

The poems at first blush appear to be very tongue-in-cheek, with wild situations and imaginative conversations. Beneath the surface there is a powerful female voice carving out her due. From burying the past and digging it up to expressing exasperation with being human and all that requires. One of my favorite poems is Wrap it in Silk, which was published in The Los Angeles Review.

Dear Selection Committee by Melissa Studdard reminds us that we are center stage in our own lives and we need to live it boldly and without excuses. We can be kind, but also we can get what we want by going after it, not waiting for it to come to us. This collection is funny, sexy, and empowering. You won’t be able to put it down.

RATING: Cinquain

About the Author:

Melissa Studdard is the author of five books, including the poetry collection I ATE THE COSMOS FOR BREAKFAST. Her work has been published or featured by places such as NPR, PBS, The New York Times, The Guardian, POETRY, Kenyon Review, Psychology Today, and New England Review. Her awards include The Poetry Society of America’s Lucille Medwick Memorial Award, The Penn Review Poetry Prize, the REEL Poetry Festival Audience Choice Award, the Tom Howard Prize, and more.

Dispatches from Frontier Schools by Sarah Beddow

Source: Publisher
Paperback, 124 pgs.
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Dispatches From Frontier Schools by Sarah Beddow is an in-depth account of teacher in a poorly funded charter school and the pull of an educator to fulfill their passion in educating children and the tension it comes with when there is little funding, students are hard to reach, and family takes a back seat to her students. In the opening poem, “Dispatch for: [redacted]” the poet says, “I do not want    do not want cannot/stand this world/for them  So I touched/ her and listened.    She did/not dissolve    today but/surely she will/and/if I can   I will be/the nurse who notices   the silent shivering  the silent tears   and brings/an extra blanket//” (pg. 16)

Throughout this collection, readers will experience what it is like inside the classroom, dealing with managers, and caring deeply for students. She wants to reward her most engaged students, but the world seems to conspire against even the simplest rewards – a donut party. There’s a deep sadness in some of these poems. It’s clear the narrator of these poems is dedicated to her students, but teaching itself is hard enough without having to handle the pressures of the administration and compliance with rules. in “Dispatch re: Complaince” “I have / nothing else / to give   no ideas better than these / no students more woke / no donuts / no tears left to cry in the parking lot dawn / no me” (pg. 19)

Beddow tackles guns in school, education compliance, testing, inter-personal relationships between students, teen pregnancy, and how teachers must be involved but not be too involved in students’ lives. From “Dispatch re: Our Scholars” (pg. 55), “To take children of color and   performatively / age them into such series / stuffy  academics Lock them away in / an ivory tower  until they / emerge civil and / obedient  fit to meet the nation’s needs”

Dispatches From Frontier Schools by Sarah Beddow is a deeply moving collection of horror and beauty in educating students in a tumultuous time where students and teachers are under enormous pressures. Beddow is a masterful storyteller; she will have readers crying and thinking deeply about our education system.

RATING: Quatrain

About the Poet:

Sarah Beddow is a poet, wife and mother. She is the author of the book Dispatches from Frontier Schools (Riot in Your Throat) and the chapbook What’s pink & shiny/what’s dark and hard (Porkbelly Press). Her poems and essays have appeared in Bone Bouquet, Menacing Hedge, Entropy, GlitterMOB, and elsewhere. She has degrees in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University and Sarah Lawrence College. After completing her MFA in poetry, she earned an MS in Urban Education from Mercy College and spent nearly a decade teaching high school English. Though she now works in educational publishing, she looks forward to one day returning to the classroom.

String by Matthew Thorburn

Source: Publisher
Paperback, 84 pgs.
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String by Matthew Thorburn is a poetry collection that tells a story of a boy living through war and explores the thread of loss and memory with precision. Every moment with this boy is unexpected, and his pain becomes our pain. Through these poems, Thorburn gives us an intimate picture of this teenager’s life from the doctor with the cigarettes on his desk to Rosie, who catches his eye.

While there is memory that delights and makes this boy smile, there are other, darker memories that he cannot forget.

They (pg. 11)

liked to throw things
a man down a well a woman
through a window they

liked to know things
names and dates your hopes
what hurt my hiding place

the combination to Saltzman's
empty safe they liked to 
break things doors bicycles

legs and backs and necks
they liked to take things
money gold rings fingernails

and fathers they had
no need for her none for me
except they were hungry so

hungry and so angry
like shadows they liked to hide
behind my back they liked

to ride behind my eyelids
death was their dark horse
they never stood still.

Thorburn’s images bring the reader into each scene. It is harrowing; it is deeply depressing. But there also is light in the survival. What can survive a Holocaust? What can survive a war? What can survive genocide? Our memories, our connections, our stories. We merely have to share them.

Damaged Animal (pg. 12)

The poor white upright
piano scored with
bullet holes they shot it too

then tipped it off
the balcony mangling Rosie's

silver bicycle forever
after a damaged animal
the white keys broken

teeth in the gutter
where their piss trickled

the black keys like
fingers broken in 
black gloves

String by Matthew Thorburn is achingly beautiful and unforgettable. The story will have you turning the pages as if it were a novel. The imagery is searing and heartbreaking. If you are on the lookout for a narrative poetry collection with a cohesive story, this is one for you. Thorburn is at his best here.

RATING: Cinquain

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About the Poet:

Matthew Thorburn’s new book of poems is String, published by Louisiana State University Press in March 2023. He’s also the author of seven previous collections, including The Grace of Distance, a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize; the book-length poem Dear Almost, honored with the Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry; and A Green River in Spring, winner of the Coal Hill Review chapbook competition. ​His work has been recognized with a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, the Mississippi Review Prize, and fellowships from the Bronx and New Jersey arts councils and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. A native of Michigan and for many years a New Yorker, he lives with his family in small-town New Jersey.