Chris Banks

Mere Extinction: Poems by Evie Christie

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Evie Christie’s second poetry collection Mere Extinction forthcoming from ECW Press is a sprawling empire of beating hearts and lost children, apocalyptic prepping and climate change, single moms and human bewilderment.

The Shadow List by Jen Sookfong Lee

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Jen Sookfong Lee is a seasoned writer with several notable books, but The Shadow List forthcoming this Spring from Wolsak & Wynn is her first poetry collection. It is so refreshing to see a poet embrace the personal lyric, the confessional mode, so freely and expertly.

Democratically Applied Machine by Robert Colmon

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Robert Colman's third book of poetry, Democratically Applied Machine, is a back-to-basics approach to creation. In poems that inhabit both industrial and domestic landscapes, Colman traces his inheritance to determine how his life echoes that of his forebears, even as the past blurs with the onset of his father's Alzheimer's dementia.

Standing On The Shoulders Of Our Mentors

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Marvin Bell died yesterday. A poetic giant has fallen. His Dead Man poems are everything good poetry is about: deeply imagistic, humane, formally ambitious, culturally significant, political without pretension, and on and on. It is the work of a lifetime. His death made me realize most of my poetic mentors are now gone. Hayden Carruth. Mark Strand. Philip Levine. And now Marvin Bell.

In The Vicinity of Riches by Chris Hutchinson

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In The Vicinity of Riches by Chris Hutchinson is a poetry collection that takes a hard look at Late Stage Capitalism through the jaundiced eye of a poet whose Romantic sensibilities are constantly under attack by a society obsessed with virtual fame, iPhones, petrochemicals and antidepressants.