Too Heavy to Carry by Cat Dixon

The strengths of this poetry collection come in the image based prose poems and compelling narratives. The themes of abandonment, the circus, the nature of God, and the nature of motherhood causes the reader to see the speaker of these poems as a whole person. There is a stark honesty in these poems that discusses the world as it is, not as we want it to be.

Lying by Lauren Slater

When Slater discusses illness, she discusses what she cannot control in her life. By discussing what she cannot control, I as a reader, am caused to question what illnesses fill my life and what those illnesses keep me from experiencing. While questioning the purpose of memoir, this book questions the purpose of illness.

Divergent Trilogy by Veronica Roth

As someone who primarily reads poetry and literary fiction, I have decided that if one must sacrifice trust in their readers, there should be a big pay off, and in these books the payoff is a strong, direct conversation about courage, selflessness, grief, regret, and human experience as a whole. The repetitive images of judging bodies and appearance, water, tears, the grasping and wedging of hands lends these book to interpretation beyond the surface reading of the events which is not commonly said about teen fiction. The realistic ending that has hope shows that Roth did not take the task of writing a dystopic trilogy lightly, which created a good genre specific reading experience.

Bough Down by Karen Green

I should say reading about the feelings that remain from a suicide is depressing, but seeing an extended image of how one unfolds after tragedy is strangely comforting. I should say that whenever animals can explain an event better than the consistent speaker in a book, it is a true and striking event. I should say chronology is a construct for the stages of grief, but this is only about survival, not grief.

After You Dearest Language by Marisol Limon Martinez

Let's discuss poetry by discussing words and the associations we have with them. Let's discuss creating a new language and syntax for how we string sentences together. Lets discuss why associating one word with another word is a poem in and of itself.

Tinderbox Lawn by Carol Guess

These poems are meant to be read aloud, as they think they revolve around the interesting sounds and the pairing for words, but in reality these poems rely on the weighted endings that remind the reader that this lawn is not a safe place. The direct address of these prose poems makes the reader want to inflict a narrative on these poems, but this collection rejects that idea which causes the reader to wade through and relish the ideas that appear. Many of the beginnings do feel contrived, but if a poem can begin discussing how it is impossible to get a lap dance in Seattle and then end with, "you hear the voice of the girl in the box, the voice everoyone else mistakes for spring", it is worth attention.

How to Survive a Hotel Fire by Angela Veronica Wong

* You may listen to anything but Billy Joel while reading this collection.

The poems are fueled by negation. The flames are fanned when the poems turn in, address themselves, and cause the reader to discuss what really is a hotel fire and what does survival really mean.  The poems work in reverse if one wants to view this as a narrative book, but how has that ever assisted anyone in survival?