Quill and Quire

Poetry

Paradoxides

By Don McKay

Don McKay’s 12th collection is his first since the 2007 Griffin Poetry Prize–winning Strike/Slip. Despite the fact that this new volume is weighted toward verse about aging and life’s inevitable deterioration, its paradoxically upbeat and ... Read More »

March 22, 2012 | Filed under: Poetry

A Walker in the City

By Meira Cook

Méira Cook’s third book of poetry contains a long poem composed of seven interlocking sections. Multiple characters emerge, recede, and are created, for the most part, by writing each other into existence. The arresting first ... Read More »

February 7, 2012 | Filed under: Poetry

Carapace

By Laura Lush

Laura Lush’s third collection is awash in dualities: it is as much a celebration of life and new beginnings as a metaphysical journey into the notion of endings. The poems constantly switch from ironic to ... Read More »

January 4, 2012 | Filed under: Poetry

Groundwork

By Amanda Jernigan

Amanda Jernigan’s debut poetry collection forwards a critique of contemporary aesthetics and knowledge production. From archaeological excavations in modern-day Tunisia to a stop in the Garden of Eden (en route to the islands of Homer’s ... Read More »

January 4, 2012 | Filed under: Poetry

Apologetic for Joy

By Jessica Hiemstra-Van Der Horst

Jessica Hiemstra-Van Der Horst’s first full-length book of poetry incorporates two previously published chapbooks alongside new material. The book explores the nature of artistic creation; thematically, it elevates the visual, sensory, tactile world. Whether focusing ... Read More »

November 15, 2011 | Filed under: Poetry

Gift Horse

By Mark Callanan

Mark Callanan’s second collection of poetry opens with an examination of life after near-death, an experience the poet knows first-hand. The book was written after a “near-fatal medical emergency,” and many of the early poems ... Read More »

November 15, 2011 | Filed under: Poetry

Winter Cranes

By Chris Banks

“Simplicity” is a loaded term; its mere invocation could be considered a kind of immodesty, or at least a foreshadowing of the presence of its sister, complexity, lurking around the corner. The word “simple” is ... Read More »

October 25, 2011 | Filed under: Poetry

Alert to Glory

By Sally Ito

Sally Ito’s third collection of poetry is dedicated to God, “with whom the soul most richly desires communion.” In spite of some clever phrasing and musical language, it contains little that formally, structurally, or stylistically ... Read More »

September 26, 2011 | Filed under: Poetry

Oyama Pink Shale

By Sharon Thesen

In the first section of “Five Preludes,” the opening poem of Sharon Thesen’s ninth collection, a woman is caught in a moment of indecision about which hat she should wear when going out. Each of ... Read More »

July 26, 2011 | Filed under: Poetry