Tag Archive
Southeastern landscape finds its Mary Oliver in Janisse Ray’s ‘House of Branches’
BOOK REVIEW
By CHRISTOPHER MARTIN
A House of Branches
Janisse Ray
Wind Publications, 2010
Upon the publication of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, Janisse Ray’s prose testament to the rich human history and the devastated longleaf pinewoods of south Georgia, a reviewer for the New York Times declared, “the forests of the Southeast find their Rachel Carson.” A little over… »
‘The Hands of Strangers:’ A Quick and Satisfying Book for Summer
BOOK REVIEW
By BETH BROWNE
The Hands of Strangers
Michael J. Smith
Main Street Rag, 2011
Read a great novella lately? Neither had I until someone gave me a copy of Michael F. Smith’s The Hands of Strangers. I picked it up and could not put it down. And best of all, I only had to neglect… »
A Beautiful Violence: Charles Dodd White’s slim new novel packs power
BOOK REVIEW
By SHELDON LEE COMPTON
Lambs of Men
Charles Dodd White
Casperian Books, 2010
It’s a slim book. One that will surprise you, though, like so many other compact stories that have the power of an atom.
From the first chapter of Charles Dodd White’s Lambs of Men, as Hiram Tobit readies to return to his mountain home from… »
Novel, poetry collection or concept album? Keane masters the ring and the written word
BOOK REVIEW
By MARIANNE WORTHINGTON
Death-Defying Acts: New Poems
Erin Keane
WordFarm, 2010
Louisville poet and journalist Erin Keane’s haunting new collection of circus-themed poems comes with a price: reading this book forces us to admit our fascination for freaks and fools and “the exquisite horror of a sideshow.” Like a ringmaster, Keane balances between spectacle and reality and leads… »
Brilliant and startling, Noriega’s poems deliver ‘kiss-the-canvas, one-two punch’
BOOK REVIEW
By ELIZABETH IANNACI
Kim Noriega’s debut collection, Name Me, is unflinching in its honesty and breathtaking in its straightforward approach. These 11 poems are written with such startling lack of guile, one could almost miss Noriega’s brilliance in crafting them.
The book is a journey that takes the reader from womb to rebirth, and… »
Tomlinson’s fictional stories reveal hard truths of mountaintop removal mining and other subjects
BOOK REVIEW
By MARY POPHAM
Fiction offers a close look at the truth in Jim Tomlinson’s group of short stories, Nothing Like An Ocean. When he delves into issues such as mountaintop removal coal mining, marriage difficulties and the loneliness of single people, he gets to reality—the heart of the subjects.
In lovely prose, Tomlinson reveals the interiority… »
Memorable characters, narrator’s insights immerse reader in House’s latest novel
BOOK REVIEW
By MARY POPHAM
With a magic wand of words, Silas House casts his readers into the mind of a 10-year-old boy, Eli Book. This is the age when a child’s experiences begin to inform his life and his emotional makeup jells. Eli’s formative period is 1976, at the end of the Vietnam era, when all… »
Collection offers taste of Kentucky’s best poets
BOOK REVIEW
By MARY POPHAM
Kentucky writers, natives and transplants produce work from contrasting locales, backgrounds and history. As George Ella Lyon explains, “a lot of forces intersect in Kentucky. East and west, north and south. We’ve been seen as Frontier and as Backwater, traditional and renegade. We’ve got mountains and rivers, flatlands and bluegrass; we’re landlocked… »
Collection offers full plate of life in small package
BOOK REVIEW
By IVY PAGE
Sarah Luczaj’s An Urgent Request is a small collection of poetry that serves up a delicious plate of familial, personal and natural images that dance on the tongue and spill into the body. The theme of internal and external voice and experience provokes the reader to examination of self. Her title poem,… »
Poems in ‘Seed Across Snow’ lift mundane into profound
BOOK REVIEW
By MARY POPHAM
A poem is an experience of high pleasure—an invitation into the mind of an artist, to evoke comparisons, conclusions, epiphanies. These promises are fulfilled by Kathleen Driskell’s latest poetry collection, Seed Across Snow.
Beginning with “Overture,” the poet lays out the principle themes and reflections. Driskell draws her reader close, takes him with… »
