Dora Malech's Shore Ordered OceanTarpaulin Sky Press, August 2010
"Dora Malech is a poetic contradiction of the best sort: a hyper-productive perfectionist. There’s a surplus of brilliant poems in Malech’s ninety-one-page debut, Shore Ordered Ocean, a book that showcases a rare talent. And while I hope that someday soon her work will need no introduction, I think the opening lines from “A Way” will, for the time being, provide a nice preview of Malech’s cartwheeling lyrical voice..."
Words Try to Get into HeavenThe Hollins Critic, February 2010
"If you were wondering what kind of poet could combine contemporary American poetry’s taste for discontinuity with conversational immediacy, then let me introduce you to David Blair. Blair’s debut collection of poems, Ascension Days, is shot through with moments of both love and bewilderment that result in a fascinating tension between the poet’s desire for emotional candor and his taste for elliptical syntax and imagery..."
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The Truth Derived of DamageContrary Magazine, Winter 2010
"If you think that contemporary American poetry is perhaps unnaturally fascinated with urban experience, fragmentary psychology, and theoretically inflected language, then you could use a dose of Kevin Goodan's eerie and intricate pastoral voice. The taut untitled poems of Winter Tenor, Goodan's gorgeous second collection, turn west at Brooklyn and drive thousands of miles deep into the wilderness of isolated human experience..."
Monuments of RescueContrary Magazine, Summer 2009
"Pardon the highfalutin opening, but D.A. Powell is one of America's most important living poets. Powell's "long and jangly" lines, and his masterful shifts of diction and subject matter, among other lyrical pyrotechnics, have helped him to leave his quirky stamp on contemporary poetry..."
The Malady, the inquiry, the pistol, the pistolContrary Magazine, Spring 2009
"What if encyclopedias could free associate? What if Marianne Moore hosted Antiques Road Show? What if Vogue and Guns & Ammo wrote cooperative features exploring the history of desire? Revolver, Robyn Schiff's second collection of poems, is not only the best answer to these questions; it is also a book of generational importance..."
Entering a World in The Man SuitContrary Magazine, Winter 2009
"The poems of Zachary Schomburg's debut collection, The Man Suit, are often surreal, fabular, cryptic, and visionary. The Man Suit is full of vertiginous even deranged scenarios that are marshaled by the most unassuming language..."