Beat Scrapbook
Next month will mark my sixth anniversary as a reviewer for At The Inkwell. I must confess that of all the books I’ve reviewed during that time, I was most excited to read BEAT Scrapbook. Like other millennials, the Beat generation greatly influenced my youth.
The Many Uses of Mint
After reading Ravi Shankar’s latest poetry collection, The Many Uses of Mint, I was reminded of the words from George Orwell writing after World War II: “One ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language….” This sounds eerily familiar with our current state of the world. We need our poets. I think Ravi Shankar is one of the best. His vocabulary is vast. His words are sewn together like a professionally tailored suit. He has much to teach us about life if only we have the patience and courage to listen.
Clerk of the Dead
As I write this, America is undergoing great political uncertainty. My wife and I are checking in with each other every fifteen minutes or so about the latest vote counts in states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. This week I have frequently found myself refreshing news websites waiting for the big reveal, the epic climax of a long and hard-fought election. This has not been particularly healthy. Therefore, it was something of a treat to read Alan Perry’s Clerk of the Dead, a chapbook about the small or dying things we often ignore in the course of major events.
The Full Moon Herald
Constant Twitter scrolling is taking the place of quiet contemplation and reasoned discourse, we have a wealth of information but a poverty of context. This is why I enjoyed Phyllis Klein’s new book, The Full Moon Herald, a poetic take on news and current events.
At Home in the New World
In her debut essay collection, Maria Terrone—a Queens native born to first-generation Italian-American parents—brings to life memories and musings on topics like food, family, fear, and one New Yorker’s journey in the face of them all. Written in conversational prose and driven by a lyrical imagination, At Home in the New World shows traces of Terrone’s multiple poetry collections. Her essays even include selections of her own verse, as well as allusions to poets like Gertrude Stein and Stephen Dunn. In this collection, she creatively navigates the spaces between her roots and her future, between who she is expected to be and who she discovers she can be.
The Infinite Doctrine of Water
If I had a very young poet in my life right now, I would gift them a copy of Michael T. Young’s The Infinite Doctrine of Water post haste. The poems in this, Young’s third book, take the reader on a guided tour of beauty, mystery and thoughtful meditations on a wide range of topics, from new pens to turpentine to Jersey City, a town that I have not seen visited in verse often. The width and breadth and depth of the book is staggering.
Our Dreams Might Align
Some books of short stories feel like they take you on an assortment of short vacations, others feel more sublime, like they are taking you away from life itself, into other worlds or realities. Our Dreams Might Align is one such book of delicious fictions that toggle or get close to magical and speculative realms but never leave the country of the heart. Dana Diehl has a spot- on deadeye shot at the bulls eye on yours. And she never misses.