Poetry Book Reviews

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

More than 1,000 years after the epic poem of Beowulf was first penned, Andrew B. F. Carnabuci continues a long tradition of demystification and offers up his own take with Beowulf: A Verse Translation from the Anglo-Saxon.

What remains unchanged in this accessible and unbiased translation is the story itself: the tragic and triumphant life of Beowulf, a great Scandinavian warrior whose bravery and leadership has become the stuff of legend. Beginning with his youthful battles in Denmark against the infamous monster Grendel, and Grendel’s even more malevolent mother, it doesn’t take long for the Beowulf to demonstrate his […]