Kent Shaw

Kent's review of Xanax Cowboy 5/5: Hannah Green is such a poser. Or Xanax Cowboy is. Or the “Hannah Green” who’s made this character to explain her life as a young adult. Whatever term you think fits when a poet invents a persona,...

"Xanax Cowboy is as much an extended monologue of mistaken identity as they are a WTF is this identity I’m being mistaken for. And, yes, there is outrage compelling the poems forward."

from my goodreads review of Hannah Green's Xanax Cowboy
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

I think T. S. Eliot's "First Voice" vs "Second Voice" can provide an interesting angle for reading Rodney Gomez's poem, "Genealogy" (found originally at The Boiler). Or that's what I'm talking about here:

thekalliope.org/genealogy-by...

Kent's review of Liontaming in America 5/5: After reading Willis’s book, I’m personally convinced an official start to human history can be located by those who are persistent enough. Everyone knows what it is. Just look behind you, like a...

"Willis’s book privileges the frayed edges of historical record. It's like visiting an archive, and you’ve been sifting through materials for the whole day, and now it’s everywhere on the table."

from my goodreads review of Elizabeth Willis's Liontaming in America
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

I feel like I also could have said Abigail Chabitnoy's "Hawking Rabbit Feet in the Age of Disbelief" uses an organic form to uncover its argument. I said this instead.

thekalliope.org/hawking-rabb...

Kent's review of April Galleons 5/5: There’s a wisdom to knowing how much of the world around you might be available to you, and how much more of it will merely exist. Trees in blossom. Your uncertainty which of the days it will be ...

"Let’s face it, Ashbery is the most there poet there is. The poetics of suddenly realizing, but burying all that sudden realization in rhetoric so that it’s not all the time clear there was a there there."

from my goodreads review of John Ashbery's April Galleons
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

What I really enjoy about Stefania Gomez's poem "Wreck" is its occupation of a between. It can be silly. It can be somber. And it's the occupation between those I'm trying to write about on my blog.

thekalliope.org/wreck-by-ste...

Sorrow, Framed: A book review for Emily Lee Luan's Return - theKalliope I have an initial review of Emily Lee Luan’s Return at goodreads. But I’ve thought to further elaborate on it after my close reading of the book’s final poem, “From weeping into weeping.” Emily Lee Lu...

I'd like to think this is a fair, critical reading of Emily Lee Luan's book, Return. And what I mean by critical is I register my delight that the book accomplishes its ambition.

thekalliope.org/sorrow-frame...

Kent's review of Paris Spleen 5/5: What is a city? Which seems like a sensible question. But it’s not. Because there are ways a city is what people want to find in a city. In many of Baudelaire’s prose poems, he alludes to the spe...

"A city can serve an individual’s ennui, and within that flat affect can exist the urge to say something new, to notice someone who would have gone overlooked, or to stir a fantasy."

from my goodreads review of Charles Baudelaire's Paris Spleen
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Hi yes the coda of my book touches upon this as well as like three articles I have recently written about the inefficiency of humanistic study!! I will be annoying about this forever probably!

Submissions OPEN for the Wisconsin Poetry Series @uwiscpress.bsky.social ! Daniel Borzutzky is this year's judge for the Wisconsin Translation Prize! Airea D. Matthews for the Brittingham and Pollak Prize. Finalists are also chosen for publication! wicw.submittable.com/submit

Kent's review of All the Garbage of the World, Unite! 5/5: Something happened here. Something got stuck in a hole. Something sick. Like how garbage is sick. Like some people might talk about having baggage from previous relationships, and it feels like a...

"Because so much of this book smells. Like if you’re going to read it, prepare to be nauseous. Prepare to laugh at how the world is."

from my goodreads review of Kim Hyesoon's All the Garbage of the World, Unite!
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Reading Emily Lee Luan's "From weeping into weeping," I realize how impressionable I am. It's like I want to give in to as many readings as I think the poem suggests.

I talk about that in this blog post:
thekalliope.org/from-weeping...

Kent's review of It Is If I Speak 4/5: It’s hard for me not to read this in the context of the year 2000. The year Wenderoth had published Letters to Wendy’s with Verse Press. A book that got a lot of attention, and, I would argue, co...

"I read the book like I’m reading the B-sides of Letters to Wendy’s. And to be specific, the B-sides of Dead Letter Office to Document that happened with REM over the Amnesiac to Kid A of Radiohead."

from my goodreads review of Joe Wenderoth's It Is If I Speak
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of Cold Dogs 4/5: Zan de Parry is invested in whatever teaching moment poetry is capable of. Like a poem could be a poem with a rose or it could be a rose-colored poem, and de Parry is going to lead you to drink a...

"Think of how every rose has its thorns, think of each thorn as a dimension, then think of de Parry’s imagination tangling the thorniness into a network of situations."

from my goodreads review of Zan de Parry's Cold Dogs
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

A Movie's Affect: A book review of Alisha Dietzman's Sweet Movie - theKalliope A book review for Alisha Dietzman's Sweet Movie (Beacon, 2023)

I posted a book review for @agdietzman.bsky.social's Sweet Movie.

thekalliope.org/a-movies-aff...

"Like a long sentence provides mimetic access to the poet’s personal comfort, a personal quiet, and then what he might do with all that."

I probably don't understand Ron Silliman's "Quietism." But in close reading Jeff Stonic's poem, "oscillating," I attempt to some.
thekalliope.org/oscillating-...

Kent's review of Apology for Want 5/5: Reading this book, I’m reminded that Mary Jo Bang was a photographer before publishing this book. It’s something in my Bang readings that I wish I would have realized earlier. Because it speaks m...

"I would argue the speaker in Apology for Want is like a version of Elizabeth Bishop preparing the way for Mary Jo Bang’s Louise, who appears in her second book, Louise in Love."

from my goodreads review of Mary Jo Bang's Apology for Want
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

"Is it viable to live life in a state that passes between "that's it!” and “that’s it?" A poetry of simply dealing with things."

My close reading of Stephanie Cawley's poem, "Brutal Fiction" Published in Bennington Review):
thekalliope.org/brutal-ficti...

Kent's review of Dissonance 5/5: If you were to map a poem, or you were to lay a poem over a map, so you could see the contours and roadways beneath the paper. So, if it were a map of the foothills, where you’re living, or you’v...

"That’s the poetry of Dykstra’s book. The awareness of place, the commitment to accuracy, like a map is accurate, and the natural, observational statement a map makes."

from my goodreads review of Kristin Dykstra's Dissonance
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

"I've always liked thinking that sin isn't really that sinful in the eyes of God, because when I sin, I'm conscious of God. God’s on my mind."

from my thoughts on @agdietzman.bsky.social's poem "Yet." It is assuredly sinful to read the poem. Proceed with caution!
thekalliope.org/yet-by-alish...

Kent's review of Walden Pond 5/5: There are clear issues to data in the 21st century. Data as singular pieces of information, that is. The impulse to combine data. Or amalgamate it. Or chart it. Or arrange it in a play, but it’s ...

"...these historic poems think about the various ways history can be viewed in the present. About visiting historical sites, and the difference between those that have been tamped down by tourist activities..."

from my goodreads review of Patty Nash's Walden Pond
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of A Queen in Bucks County 5/5: Be careful reading Kay Gabriel’s book. Especially if you’re a man, because you’re probably used to hearing how most men think with their dick. And this Turner in Gabriel’s book is definitely thin...

"If reading for what goes through someone’s mind while they anticipate satisfying others’ needs, and kind of “not giving a fuck” about what people in the suburbs say, this book is for you."

from my goodreads review of Kay Gabriel's A Queen in Bucks County
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of Judas Goat 4/5: I think there is a challenge to writing the poetry of “where I’m from.” Because its narrative has been shorthanded by the poet. Like childhood and origins can operate inside people like a persona...

"It puts me in mind of the sharp, mysterious gestures violence reveals in the book. It directs the poem to a consciousness the poet has of her body."

from my goodreads review of Gabrielle Bates's Judas Goat
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of Boat 5/5: What is the nature of subjectivity. Fashioned as statement, but grammared as question. Does it make the sentence an active verb in the present moment. What is intimate space compared to subjectiv...

"To read Robertson's book is to participate in the present tense, and at the margins of inquiry, and to actively fray statements that might sound like questions."

from my goodreads review of Lisa Robertson's Boat
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of Philomath 5/5: There is mythology that is like embodied knowledge. That is like knowing when it’s the most emphasized part of a sentence, like in the sentence, “She was very knowing.” And this is Walker-Figuero...

"Philomath is more knowing the consequences of parental love. Especially how it’s suffocating the way you might imagine incubation is suffocating."

from my goodreads review of Devon Walker-Figueroa's Philomath
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of The atmosphere is not a perfume it is odorless 4/5: Matthew Cooperman’s poetry has always put me in mind of the work done by heavy, poetic diffusion. Like a lyricizing of circumstance so it feels like a weighted blanket, or lyric as relentless hum...

"He writes an “Ode to No,” as in the No that everyone is saying to everyone in the current climate. The No of denial. But also the No of contrariety..."

from my goodreads review of Matthew Cooperman's the atmosphere is not a perfume it is odorless
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of Three Poems 5/5: I’d like to argue that all John Ashbery’s poems could be framed by a poetics of the asymptote. How they move, the conceptual distance they, their pushiness, positioning the reader closer and clos...

"I’d like to argue that all John Ashbery’s poems could be framed by a poetics of the asymptote. How they move, the conceptual distance they, their pushiness..."

from my goodreads review of John Ashbery's Three Poems
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Can I just suggest A Handmade Museum, by Brenda Coultas? It speaks strongly to what New York was at that time. And then the unexpectedness of that day.

Kent's review of Hereafter (Song Cave, 57) 4/5: An elegy can have varying expressions. There is the elegy of sharp grief, where a poem swims itself toward loss, especially that singular sensation when the poet realizes the person they loved is...

"But there is also the elegy of enduring grief. The person’s death is a dark, abiding presence. And the poem, or the book of poems, will need to be less performative and more ruminative."

from my goodreads review of Alan Felsenthal's Hereafter
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of Domestirexia 4/5: Abbreviation in poetry is like when you press a divot into clay. Its brief gesture meant to be something, but not entirely what something it is. Or it’s learning to sketch, specifically where you...

"What I’m thinking about here is abbreviation as a gesture, and what the body feels like making that gesture."

from my goodreads review of JoAnna Novak's Domestirexia
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...