Reviews - August 2015

Between the world and the poem

On Dorothy Wang's forms and formations

The last sentence of Dorothy J. Wang’s Thinking Its Presence — “It must change” — is a call to action in its redeployment of the title of Marjorie Perloff’s 2006 MLA address.

Song is remedy for loss

A review of Tiff Dressen's 'Songs from the Astral Bestiary'

If I were suffering from some kind of loss in the ancient Hellenic world, I could travel to an Asclepion priestess at Epidaurus and spend the night in an abaton, or sacred space, to ride out my dreams after having been given a “sleep” cure suited to my specific needs. In her first book-length collection, Songs from the Astral Bestiary, Tiff Dressen devises her own abaton made of poetry, taking her reader on a lyrical journey via the dreamscape where song is remedy for loss.