Even before I picked up my copy, from brief research, I knew some of the beautifully written subject matter of Terra Oliveira’s new poetry collection, Itinerant Songs, would be incredibly relevant, emotional, and at times hard to digest. Was I wrong? No, but I was wrong in thinking that this might turn me off from the text. Instead, I found the underlying and challenging tones of rawness, pain, and tension to be what make Oliveira’s new collection such a worthy read.
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No one ever claimed that motherhood was easy. It is full of challenges and growth. Mothers are human beings who are still learning like the rest of us. Young children, however, often begin life thinking their parent is an all-knowing being, but parents do not always have all the answers and they are not always perfect. Alexandra Addams explores a complicated mother-daughter relationship through the perspective of fifty-nine-year-old Judith, mother to Cassandra, in her debut novel The Self-Made Saint. A self-made saint herself, Judith spent most of her daughter's childhood volunteering in Kenya in refugee camps, and now she is reaping the consequences.
In some way or another, we are all caught in our own modern minutia, marching to the tune of a drum that is beaten for us like eggs in a Sunday scramble. People crave escape. People crave reprieve. People crave a difference in the daily, to either be or see something remarkable, or simply to remark at the unremarkable, and experience joy in a way that can only be described as simple, but special.
John Popielaski’s poetry collection That Special Something is a home-brewed, hand-poured draft, best enjoyed on the porch with the sweet, harmonic melody of nature playing in the background. Popielaski trades the business and bustle of our constructed world for the serene scenes of running water in a stream and the cigar smoke in dive bars; the smell of hops and cracked corn; and the sounds of crickets, American toads, and the holy rise and fall of breathing.
In Sarah Fawn Montgomery’s new collection of lyric essays, Abbreviate, readers are treated to the captivating beauty of her narrative work and the haunting vulnerability that comes with it. In just nineteen essays, she shares reflections and revelations, transporting us into the critical moments that have shaped her life and, in turn, mirror the experiences of so many women. Her language is both delicate and powerful, a reference to the feminine. At the same time, the unsettling and sometimes horrifying nature of her subjects—pain, loss, identity, womanhood—is skillfully woven together, creating a tapestry of beauty, nostalgia, and truth that lingers long after the final page.
When people leave our lives, relics are left behind as testaments to their existence. These relics are often possessions of loved ones, sometimes stories observed or passed down, and other times, they are us. Jaki McCarrick’s debut poetry collection Sweeney as a Girl conjures a lived-in world via these relics, whether they're rooted in the history of her life, her literary muses, or her homeland.
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