Review by New York Times Review
Gloss By Rebecca Hazelton. (University of Wisconsin, paper, $14.95.) Hazelton's poems cast a teasing light over the surface sheen of social norms, the playacting in every relationship: "Let's pretend to be with other people," one ends, "until we're with POETRY °ther people." But beneath their own witty surfaces, the poems also brim with loss and serious moral inquiry, when i walk through that door, i am By Jimmy Santiago Baca. (Beacon, paper, $10.95.) Subtitled "An Immigrant Mother's Quest," this book-length poem follows a woman battling obstacles from El Salvador to the United States to secure a better life for her son. what's in a name By Ana Luisa Amaral, translated by Margaret Juli Costa. (New Directions, paper, $16.95.) This bilingual volume, pairing Costa's translations with Amaral's Portuguese originals, relies on humble imagery and plain language to plumb complicated truths, as in a poem about the brother of the prodigal son: "ft must be a strange thing / loyalty / and how difficult the task / of loving." tap out By Edgar Kunz. (Mariner, paper, $14.99.) In his debut collection, Kunz charts the gritty, physical terrain of blue-collar masculinity: a workbench made from scrap wood, a night job in an engine shop, a father's hands with "knuckles more scar / than skin." still life with mother and knife By Chelsea Rathburn. (Louisiana State University, paper, $18.95.) Rathburn's third book opens with a series of "introductions" - to statistics, to home economics, to sex ed - each illuminating an aspect of modern womanhood, often passed from mother to daughter. "It's easy to fall into the habit of classifying literature as either plot-based or character-based - as if those things are mutually exclusive, and the full extent of what books have to offer. But in certain moods, what 1 really crave is neither plot nor character per se; it's the sense of a sensibility shaping the work, a palpable consciousness at play. The author as character, 1 guess. Lately I've been turning to the book of delights, a new collection of very short essays by the poet Ross Gay in which he sets himself, over the course of a year, the task of almost-daily appreciations of the world. On the one hand, that's unsurprising from a writer whose first book was called 'Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude.' On the other hand, Gay has no illusions about the world he's appreciating: The delights he extols here (music, laughter, generosity, poetry, lots of nature) are bulwarks against casual cruelties. As such they feel purposeful and imperative as well as contagious in their joy." - GREGORY COWLES, SENIOR EDITOR, BOOKS, ON WHAT HE'S READING.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [March 10, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Kunz's debut collection is a hard-hitting journey through tightly crafted poems that capture a culture on the edge of an abyss. Kunz's work is haunted by ghosts, some long-gone, others still wandering the corridors of memory. The title poem is of special note, encompassing the sometimes-brutal realities associated with coming of age: We were vicious. Swollen cheekbones, bruised jaws. These are young men beating each other in harsh and cruel rituals, naming their moves, The Figure-Four Lock and The Texas Cloverleaf, in which pain is inflicted until the weaker combatant is forced to tap out. The dominating ghost is a father who cannot be easily defeated, returning in several bitter and beautiful poems that have titles that seem to say it all, including ""My Father at 49, Working the Night Shift at B&R Diesel,"" and ""Close,"" in which a father aggressively instructs his son how to drive, and the son observes: He's still beautiful, my father. Fluid. Powerful. Kunz's solid and rewarding first book reminds us that in the battle to survive and to live, a poetic light can shine through.--Raúl Niño Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In his debut collection, Kunz crafts a poetics of disappointment and consolation: disillusionment with an alcoholic father, a marriage quickly entered into and dissolved, boyhood friends transformed into unrecognizable adults. In prose and free verse poems, Kunz paints a working-class world, "the failed industrial towns of New England," where poverty is both literal and figurative. The speaker of these poems recalls his father, a man with "knuckles more scar than skin," living in a van by the Connecticut River. The speaker reflects elsewhere on the embarrassment he felt signing up for food stamps as a child. The title poem is a battering ode to childhood backyard wrestling, the poet's descriptive fluency juxtaposed with the absurd names of remembered moves: "We were vicious. Swollen cheekbones, bruised jaws./ Forearms chafed raw and weeping. The Boston/ Crab. The Texas Cloverleaf. The Cross-/ Face Chicken Wing." Though the cities Kunz inhabits in these poems may have seen better days, he finds quiet moments of beauty in the surrounding natural world, "the dropseed prairies, the runoff ponds/ and feedcorn fields," and even in the dilapidation itself, "the waste plant's gold honeycomb towers, the faded terminals, dock cranes leaning out over the harbor like drunks." Kunz' poems are sparse and accessible, reminiscent of Hemingway in both content and style, and feature an extraordinary new voice that draws its energy from an underrepresented perspective. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
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