Poetry Book Reviews

A vulnerable confession of poetry coupled with striking illustrations, Feelings Awakened by Vibha Maurya lives up to its name, both in the heart of the reader and the mind of the poet.

In this reflective and relatable collection, there are more questions than answers, making this an exploratory journey that the poet takes right alongside the reader. There are occasional streams of confident conclusions, borne of the poet’s personal experience and overcoming of struggle, but there is also an innocent and cautious curiosity in many of these pieces. The poems from childhood, particularly “A Brown Girl” and “My Village,” stand […]

Poet and author Robert A. Cozzi has forged another powerful and personal collection of poetry in Kaleidoscope of Colors II.

Delving through his own painful and passionate life, and laying out what he has learned and felt over the course of his life, this second dynamic installment certainly earns its name. Showing impressive poetic flexibility, Cozzi moves through themes and metric styles with ease, whether it’s a pair of hard-hitting haikus or a lyrical, exploratory wander through a memory.

There are gorgeous homages to the past, such as the poem titled “Rebecca,” a portrait of a portrait, with abstract […]

In his second poetry publication, Behind the Paint, Marve Hendry emphasizes the masks we wear to hide ourselves from a multitude of life’s quandaries, and occasionally, even from ourselves.

This emotive and engaging collection is divided into five sections, with each heading beginning with “Behind the…” In “Behind the I” the poet opens with “to whom it may concern” in which he examines and questions some common assumptions:

I can’t begin to imagine
where do beautiful things go
sometimes I can
but then I feel I shouldn’t

In “Diaries of an Insomniac,” the poetic protagonist tries to stay awake […]

Allen Lee Ireland offers a panorama of human experience with sage observation enmeshed in rhyme and an enjoyably unpredictable viewpoint in Dark and Light Verse.

At times infused with irony, at times with surprising tenderness, this most recent assemblage of Ireland’s poems is divided into seven equally evocative segments. “Children of Light” includes the thorny perspective of “Two Men in Love” who decide to jump off a cliff while at the apex of their relationship, and the “Hate Crime” of someone knocked down on an icy pavement who freezes to death alone:

How terrible to die
Without a soul