book reviews
Reviews of the best poetry books, collections and anthologies; discover poems and up-and-coming poets across all cultures, genres and themes.
A Woman Scorned
Wrongly attributed to Shakespeare, the idiom "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned was adapted from the lines of a 1697 play by William Congreve, The Mourning Bride. The actual quote is, "Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd,/ Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd" (Congreve 3.2). Gaspara Stampa is a scorned woman with a rocky relationship with her lover.
By Miss Ghoul4 years ago in Poets
Introducing, 'Bound to the Wings of a Butterfly'
Bound to the Wings of a Butterfly is a collection of poetry, written as an act of writing therapy. It is about healing, recovery, and self-acceptance. About the journey of discovery that comes with true internal healing, and about transforming our lives, towards positivity, beauty, and love.
By Zachary Phillips4 years ago in Poets
Patrizia Garofalo and Cinzia Demi, "Tra Livorno e Genova, il poeta delle due città"
There are literary essays that enlighten, enrich, make people say: “Here, this is exactly what I thought and felt”. There are others dripping academia, for example those read on university days, when you had to waste an hour, not to study the poet or novelist in question, but just to understand what the critic meant with his nebula jumble of words. We students ended up telephoning one another, asking: “But what did you get?” We tried to reconstruct the thread of the discourse, to “translate” the text into an understandable Italian, laboriously linking the subject and the predicate. Often, in the end, once paraphrased and vulgarized, the essay could be summed up in three or four key concepts. We felt, then, the need to move away from a world made up only of people talking to themselves, and immerse ourselves in real life, in concrete things.
By Patrizia Poli4 years ago in Poets
Books for when you can’t stop thinking about your ex
I just realized that Valentine’s Day is actually one of my favorite holidays, which came as a surprise despite the demonstrated fact that I am fully addicted to love – brief, timeless, imaginary, accidental, decisive, stabilizing, elusive, contradictory love! It’s both excruciating and delicious. Between all the red and pink wrappers around heart-shaped chocolates, mass-printed notes with cartoon characters or cliché expressions of admiration, and the shelves stocked with a Romance for every reader that I’m sitting next to (at Third Place Books) I can’t help but think about all the love I’ve felt in my silly little life.
By Joe Nasta | Seattle foodie poet4 years ago in Poets
Landscape of the Soul: poems in Spanish and English
President John F. Kennedy, well-known as a patron of the arts, famously said, “When power corrupts, poetry cleanses,” adding that art humbles the arrogant by reminding them of their limitations. (For more on JFK's views on art, see HuffPost https://tinyurl.com/57d52yxw).
By PK Colleran4 years ago in Poets
How do we remember love?
It was nearing the end of the night, a couple of hours after a small coffee with a splash of cream but one and a half until smoking a joint at the bus stop, when Emmy grabbed the book from the streetsmart poetry titles in the back of the bookstore and held it up for me to see: “A Hundred Lovers,” the second collection from Richie Hofmann. It comes out today from Knopf. I hadn’t even heard of it until last week, but only because someone told me about it. Its sudden appearance in my little world excited me. I’d seen the cover online, so I wasn’t surprised by the stunning Greek marble bust of a broken male form, which I did love. The bold insistence of the book’s trumpeted announcement into my sphere and the physical presence of the newly on-sale product was what really captured my attention. I tried to resist, but I had to read it immediately.
By Joe Nasta | Seattle foodie poet4 years ago in Poets
