Amit Majmudar

Apocalypse Dance

Arts & Literature

“Ethan McGuire’s debut collection, ‘split between tradition and progression,’ showcases a young poet exploring forms and tones, histories and traditions as he seeks to traverse, in language, ‘one thousand li of dreams.’ His poems are at once religiously grounded and formally restless—as he himself explains, ‘I throw myself into structure, / The structured darkness of the Tao.’ Yet his impressive engagement with Eastern language and literature is quickened by a cultural command of Bob Dylan and Bluegrass, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Leonard Cohen. Apocalypse Dance will introduce readers to a new poet with great potential, his poems ‘new things . . . connecting worlds.’”

City Nave

Arts & Literature

“Betsy K. Brown’s City Nave is a collection of poems that span many shapes and approaches, sometimes a ‘whisper / just wise / enough to feel real,’ sometimes ‘mariachi and trashcan drums and rap / And something that could maybe be worship.’ In this synoptic collection, which conceives of the human pupil as ‘the tunnel with light at both ends,’ we get to witness a promising debut.”

Ponds

Arts & Literature

“Jane Clark Scharl has already distinguished herself in the verse drama. Now she makes her debut as a lyric poet with poems that partake of the same energy and curiosity, intertwining the religious, historical, and personal. The poet has a restless love of forms, with one poem sequence extinguishing light after light as it follows the pattern of a traditional Tenebrae service. Dramatic monologues free Scharl from the conventions of confessional, decentering the self in favor of the sublime as her questing faith keeps ‘rising like a star / above the fretted seas of what had been.’ A multitalented writer to watch.”