Reviews

  • The Catfish by Franz Wright: The very first obvious thing in this chapbook is a celestial quality. The poetry has a level of abstraction variant from earlier books. It is like someone who has gone to the edges of seeing and is “without margins.” Approaching the edges of seeing means to come to abstraction, as in the poem, “Unwriting,” where the opening line, “The universe is mostly made of thought,” is analogous to later Wallace Stevens around the time of “The Planet on the Table.” Notice the word “planet” in Steven’s title, while in Wright’s poems we have cold stars, the heavens, black holes, galaxies – high, far and wide words, analogs of the soul, that bright thing “without margins,” and at times frighteningly distant. read more ...
  • The Fortunate Islands by Susan-Kelly-DeWitt: Susan Kelly-DeWitt’s first full-length book is glossed by a quote from Dava Sobel in reference to the Roman Egyptian mathematician, Ptolemy, who was “free to lay his prime meridian, the zero-degree longitude line, wherever he liked. He chose to run it through the Fortunate Islands…” With this kind of an epigraph, I had expected Kelly-DeWitt to expose her own longitudinal line in the guise of her spiritual philosophy, or the path that her life has wandered. The blurbs on the back cover of her book also presuppose issues of a tough childhood, father-issues, and a deeply impacted voice. Read more in THE GREAT AMERICAN PINUP
  • The Seed Thieves by Robert Fanning: Homestead Review
  • The Seed Thieves by Robert Fanning:Metrotimes Review
  • The Seed Thieves by Robert Fanning: These poems resonate with a most exquisite sense of longing and visceral intensity. Through his poetry, we appreciate the significance of memory and loss, while marveling at his uncanny ability to resurrect, in the most immediate sense, those occasions once relegated to obscurity. There is an underlying urgency within Fanning's poems that compels the reader to indeed take note. Tim Monaghan, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher, The Ledge Magazine and Press
  • The Seed Thieves by Robert Fanning: Robert Fanning's music is percussive, meticulous and darkly funny. Like a night watchman, this poet shines a fiercely concentrated light on the weird beauty of the material world—he's like Diogenes, that other cynic who was also on a quest for the truth. Sherry Fairchock, author of "The Palace of Ashes"
  • The Boy Who Killed Caterpillars: Read the insightful review of Joshua Kornreich's book in The Meridian.
  • The Sleeping: Professionally, I've known Caroline Maun for several years; maybe five years, as long as there has been a ChickenBones. The first poem she shared with me and that I posted on our website is Faceless, a poem about a lynching, inspired by a postcard. It was a good poem, well executed with the right sympathy and perspective, the right tragic irony. I did not think much of her outside of that. I knew she was a professor at Morgan State University (MSU). I saw her numerous times at conferences sponsored by literary societies based at MSU. And I saw her more frequently when I became a member of Mid-Atlantic Writers Association (MAWA). I had lunch with her once in Charles Village at an outside cafe when she was planning a website for MAWA. At that time, I believe she was also up for tenure; she had been at Morgan for almost six years (1998-2004). read more ...
  • The Witness of Music: A few weeks back I had the pleasure of attending a reading with Alexander Suczek former president of Pro-Musica Detroit and author of The Witness of Music: 50 Years of Pro-Musica Detroit published by Marick Press. Pro-Musica is a national organization dedicated to stage up and coming musicians and composers. Pro-Musica Detroit has been up and running in this city for 81 consecutive years. read more ...
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