Reviews
REVIEW OF PRAMILA VENKATESWARAN’S WE ARE NOT A MUSEUM: THE JEWS OF KOCHI
by Amalie Flynn
Pramila Venkateswaran’s We are not a Museum: the Jews of Kochiis a stunning book of poems that embodies remembering and remembrance, forging memory for what is now unremembered. Each poem is a hand, fingers curling into the shape of a cup, cupping dirt, that soil of an ancient time and people, a people and a place I had never heard of before now.
REVIEW OF JASON ARMENT’S MUSALAHEEN: A WAR MEMOIR
by Lee Anne Gallaway-Mitchell
When I began reading Jason Arment’s Musalaheen: A War Memoir (University of Hell Press), I found the voice strangely familiar. I had read one of the chapters, “Two Shallow Graves,” years before in Best American Essays 2017, edited by Leslie Jamison. But the familiar carried a more personal resonance this time.
REVIEW OF TAMI HAALAND’S WHAT DOES NOT RETURN
by Lee Anne Gallaway-Mitchell
Tami Haaland’s poetry collection What Does Not Return (Lost Horse Press, 2018) captures the rhythms of caregiving and examines how acts of care shape our awareness and experience of time, memory, and history.
REVIEW OF JOHN SIBLEY WILLIAMS’ SCALE MODEL OF A COUNTRY AT DAWN
Scale Model of a Country at Dawn is the winner of the 2020 Cider Press Book Award and the sixth collection by John Sibley Williams, a decorated poet whose work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Best American.
REVIEW OF THE ‘STAN BY KEVIN KNODELL AND DAVID AXE
The ‘Stan includes first-hand accounts reminiscent of a reporter’s findings in the field, with panels switching between present-day interviews, sometimes with the subject of the story sitting in a car or atop a barstool with a beer in hand, to a recounted memory of Afghanistan.