Capsule reviews

The quotidian

Orchid Tierney

J2 reviews editor Orchid Tierney reads three collections interrogating the poetic forms of the everyday — or, “the intimacy possible in the fractures”: Thousand Star Hotel by Bao Phi, Days and Works by Rachel Blau DuPlessis, and Abandoned Angel: New Poems by Burt Kimmelman.

J2 reviews editor Orchid Tierney reads three collections interrogating the poetic forms of the everyday.

Upheaval and return

Julia Bloch

J2 editor Julia Bloch reviews three poetry titles on earthly and bodily reorganization: Orogeny by Iréne Mathieu, The Performance of Becoming Human by Daniel Borzutzky, and Community Garden for Lonely Girls by Christine Shan Shan Hou.

J2 editor Julia Bloch reviews three poetry titles on earthly and bodily reorganization.

In regards to time

Brianne Alphonso

J2 summer intern Brianne Alphonso reviews three titles dealing in the inevitable march of time: Kholin 66: Diaries and Poems by Igor Kholin, trans. Ainsely Morse and Bela Shayevich; How to Bake a Planet by Pete Mullineaux; and Tumbling Toward the End by David Budbill.

Brianne Alphonso returns with three capsule reviews on the inevitable onset of years.

Cityscapes in verse

Brianne Alphonso

Jacket2’s summer intern, Brianne Alphonso, reviews three poetry titles that deal in cityscapes: On a Clear Day by Jasmine Dreame Wagner, Manhattan an Archaeology by Eileen R. Tabios, and Blue by Wesley St. Jo and Remé Grefalda. Of On a Clear Day, she notes in part: “Wagner’s book — a medley of prose, poems, and essays — tells a story of urban noise in an age where ‘visibility, consistency, solvency, become moral imperatives.’ From the tapping of fingers on iPhone screens to the radio waves buzzing in our ears, the very air we breathe is loud.

Jacket2’s summer intern, Brianne Alphonso, reviews three poetry titles that deal in cityscapes: On a Clear Day by Jasmine Dreame Wagner, Manhattan an Archaeology by Eileen R. Tabios, and Blue by Wesley St. Jo and Remé Grefalda. 

Rootless places: Núñez, Queyras, Dunham

Orchid Tierney

J2 reviews editor and commentator Orchid Tierney reviews tasks by Víctor Rodríguez Núñez, Barking & Biting by Sina Queyras, and Cold Pastoral by Rebecca Dunham. Of tasks she writes, in part: “Núñez’s poems chronicle the peripheries of a Cuban homecoming while exploring the porousness of identity and nationalism so marked by a feeling of loss. ‘[I]dentity lurks,’ writes Núñez, ‘like a forgotten ring in a public bathroom.’ These poems are lucid, nomadic but not driftless in local memory as they prowl the geographies of migrant return and exile.”

J2 reviews editor and commentator Orchid Tierney writes on three poetry titles from this year and last.