Garden Physic by Sylvia Legris | Review by Bill Neumire

Although Sylvia Legris’s sixth book of poetry, Garden Physic, opens with a poem titled “Plants Reduced to the Idea of Plants” which are then further playfully reduced to “woodcuts / (circa 16th century) reduced to Victorian floor tile,” this collection clearly accomplishes just the opposite: it elevates, celebrates, and even apotheosizes plants…

PLUVIOPHILE by Yusuf Saadi | Review by Bill Neumire

Pluviophile Yusuf Saadi Nightwood Editions, 2020 Deifying rain and language, Yusuf Saadi’s debut poetry collection, Pluviophile (lover of rain), flows with a playful dedication to the music of words. In an interview with Ariel Gordon, Saadi said, “I don’t have a theory of language or understand it at all, really, but I do often find […]

ONE THING — THEN ANOTHER by Claire Kelly | Review by Bill Neumire

ONE THING — THEN ANOTHER by Claire Kelly Review by Bill Neumire From poor to rich, small town to big city, East to West, Fredericton to Edmonton, Claire Kelly’s second full-length poetry collection, One Thing – Then Another, from ECW Press, travels Canada’s vast landmass in a restless search for settlement. Kelly, author of Maunder […]

THE FOOL by Jessie Jones | Review by Bill Neumire

THE FOOL by Jessie Jones Review by Bill Neumire The fool’s manifestation in Jessie Jones’s debut full-length poetry collection comes as the speaker centers herself as an isolated sovereign, as an I fortifying itself against the world, which comes out at times as lonely, and at times as powerfully self-confident. According to the book cover, […]