May 18, 2014 by augurybooks

The Rumpus Reviews Frances Justine Post’s BEAST

Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

This week Tova Gannana from The Rumpus reviews Frances Justine Post’s BEAST (Augury, 2014), calling it a “post-world where the poet wanders alone in memory and shadow.”

Post is a poet who begins her first book with the line ‘I put on my face.’ I put on my face feels like the opening line of an honest monologue. A dark stage with one light from that light a voice. I put on my face is a pleading, an opening for a listener. Here in lies the complexity and sophistication of Beast. I put on my face means Post has a past. We have much to gain from Post because she has much to give. Beast is a book to fight off mediocrity and middle of the road culture. These are poems that stick to your bones.” —Tova Gannana, The Rumpus

Read the full review here.

Fiction Writers Review on Halina Duraj’s ‘The Family Cannon’

Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

The Fiction Writers Review has posted a lovely piece by Matthew Batt on Halina Duraj’s THE FAMILY CANNON (available here). Read an excerpt:

The miracle of this book, calling to mind Anthony Doerr’s recent Memory Wall, is that Duraj manages to distill the historical, cultural, familial, and interpersonal experience of love, memory, and pain in ten crystalline short stories that form a family portrait covering nearly a century, resonating both before its beginning and well beyond its end. ….

What binds it is the fierce and loyal will of the one who knows she has to keep weaving these stray bits of stick and story and trash and grass back together to make us who we are—family.”

Read the whole review here.

But there’s more! Head out to La Jolla tomorrow to see Halina Duraj (recent recipient of a 2014 O.Henry Award) read at D.G. Wills Books: Saturday, May 10, 7 p.m.

National Poetry Month: Washington Independent Review of Books on Maureen Alsop’s MANTIC

Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

Happy National Poetry Month! Read this wonderful MANTIC (Maureen Alsop, Augury Books, 2013) review by Grace Cavalieri in this month’s Washington Independent Review of Books.

Mantic by Maureen Alsop

“We can tell when a poem is sent out into the world scared and these poems are the opposite. They’re fearless. Alsop is like a hero who boldly moves forward and never looks back. She’s a social revolutionary using words to change our concepts of reality and the world.” —Grace Cavalieri, April 2014 Exemplars, Washington Independent Review of Books

Read the Whole Review

More on MANTIC

Buy MANTIC