In Queen of Dust, H.E. Dare (who also writes contemporary romance as Hanna Earnest) takes on a plethora of tropes I thought I was going to love. Respectable courtesans! Sex positivity! Evil corporate overlords! Romance in space! The pieces are, in a word, fantastic. (I didn’t used to be into romance in space, but guys, Jessie Mihalik totally converted me.) The pieces really didn’t work … Continue reading H.E. Dare’s Queen of Dust
Harpy of the West, with text by Rob Burton, art by Rio Burton, and lettering by Jim Campbell, is thus far a two-volume set—although it is definitely to be continued. (And I can’t wait for the continuation.) It’s very much a Western, although I suppose it would fall into the weird West category (which is, of course, what I usually read when I head for … Continue reading Harpy of the West: 1 & 2
I close out my 2022 Sealey Challenge with bittersweet beauty: Chaun Ballard’s chapbook Flight, which takes on structural white supremacy and anti-Blackness and American history while still creating beauty, which nods to poets past and present while creating something unique. Every poem in this slight collection carries weight and depth and breadth, and every poem carries meanings—more than I can grab in one reading. Reading … Continue reading The Sealey Challenge: Flight
I cried when I watched Amanda Gorman deliver The Hill We Climb, ushering in what I hoped would be a new and better time. I cried last August, when I read it in a few minutes stolen for myself. And I cried today, hard, when I read this jewel of hope for the 2022 Sealey Challenge, because I needed something hopeful after all the loss … Continue reading The Sealey Challenge 2022: The Hill We Climb
Some books are both hugs in printed form and mirrors-windows-sliding-glass-doors, all in one. A Song of Frutas, with poetry by Margarita Engle and illustrations by Sara Palacios, is very much one of those books. Pretty much everyone, including Goodreads reviewers, describes A Song of Frutas as being rhythmic, and they’re damn right it is: like Drum Dream Girl, which I’ve also read for the Sealey … Continue reading The Sealey Challenge: A Song of Frutas
Nicole Arocho Hernández’s I Have No Ocean is, at its core, poetry of fury. Poet and poetry have every right to their burning anger: this is about the devastation wrought by Hurricane María, otherwise known as the continuing devastation of imperialism. It’s another entry in this summer’s catalog of loss, and it is furious. Parts of I Have No Ocean might make more sense if … Continue reading The Sealey Challenge: I Have No Ocean
Today, I waded deep into the terrain of grief and loss and the crushing weight of hate with Jenny Qi‘s moving, powerful Focal Point, a voice of loss and lament and elegy. Focal Point was published in 2021, though, amazingly, much of its raw grief dates to several years before, when Qi’s mother died of cancer. She is with us throughout Focal Point, as loss, … Continue reading The Sealey Challenge: Focal Point
I did not know, as I began Martín Espada’s powerful, National Book Award-winning collection Floaters, what “floaters” he was talking about. I knew as soon as I turned the page to that poem, read the name of the little girl and of her father, her mother left behind on the bank. But even before I reached that second, titular poem, I knew this collection for … Continue reading The Sealey Challenge: Floaters
Zetta Elliott and Noa Denmon’s A Place Inside Of Me: A Poem to Heal the Heart is a book to be shared, a treasure ripe for the holding. Elliott’s poetry and Denmon’s illustrations are warm, as enveloping as an embrace. I read this book both as a picture book lover (can I say collector? As of art? Because they are) and also as a librarian … Continue reading The Sealey Challenge: A Place Inside of Me
Today’s poetry was Sunni Brown Wilkinson’s The Ache and the Wing, part of Sundress Publications’ e-chap series and an accidental continuation of my apparent themes of grief and loss. There are multiple losses here. One of them is the loss at birth of Wilkinson and her husband’s baby boy, which threads itself throughout the text, boy and grief and (misplaced) guilt moving even in silences. … Continue reading The Sealey Challenge: The Ache and the Wing
Essentially a Nerd 