In Carol D. Guerrero-Murphy’s stunning poems, memory and
myth collide. Wild horses bound, galaxies glow, time is taunted, and
“the whole clichéd story” of desire is rewritten with thrilling intimacy.
Guerrero-Murphy’s work inhabits both the concrete and the delightfully
abstract. Ghosts of childhood and pop culture float through Luisa Muradyan’s lush and elegant poems. Language and landscape inform one
another, “Soviet diaspora women [are] glittering in Swarovski unison,”
and the speaker ponders “that which wasn’t stolen.” Throughout Muradyan’s work, the pull of the past is captured with clarity and vision.
Familial and cultural inheritances occupy Kathryn Hunt’s fascinating
poems. In Hunt’s work, rivers speak, domestic animals teach their owners about humanity, and “every living thing speaks of fire.” Sweeping in
their scope and style, Hunt’s radiant poems look deeply and honestly
into the wilderness.
Speer Morgan
