Closer
by Miriam Gershow
Regal House Publishing (2025)

It’s an Odyssean journey, filled with modern-day shipwrecks, and by the end, the sodden characters are cast upon shores they never expected to find. Some die, others succumb to temptation, and still others flee.

The Dime Museum by Joyce Hinnefeld
Unbridled Books (August 2025)

Spanning decades and crossing continents, from the vaudeville stages of early 20th-century America to the isolation and grief of the COVID pandemic, Hinnefeld’s stories explore the lasting effects of privilege, desire, caregiving, and personal history.

Pastorals
Rachel Hadas
Measure Press

“This is what it is to live in time, to remember what we can no longer feel, to feel what we can no longer remember. And then it bubbles up.”  

Bodywork
Eva Tuschman Leonard
Bored Wolves co-edition with Firehouse Press (San Francisco), 2025

With the turning, turning of her agile mind she contemplates the myriad ways she could manage to live in the thrall of a chronic, inexplicable illness.

Willow Hammer
Patrick Donnelly
Four Way Books, 2025
86 pp.

Donnelly’s deft handling of the personal and universal tragedy of [sexual violence] is profound. He turns to mythology as a vehicle to carry the reader on the path of terrible discovery and to discuss the horror; the speaker’s not being present and not witnessing first-hand the destruction that the violence causes makes it somehow both more terrible and mythic at the same time.

What to Keep
Carlene M. Gadapee
Finishing Line Press

Through a thoughtful and substantive mix of warm visual imagery and heartbreaking scenarios, the question of what stays with us and what we leave behind reminds us of the power of individual moments, past and present, in an overstimulated world. 

Some Things I Said
David Ferry
Grolier Press

Some Things I Said is wonderfully instructive, a poetic masterclass for any aspiring or seasoned poet.

This Darkness Will Never End
Edith Bruck, translated by Jeanne Bonner
Paul Dry Books, 2025
187 pp.

New generations of readers can pay their respects to victims of the Holocaust by reading and remembering Bruck’s moving collection.

Coming Ashore
Thomas O’Grady
Arrowsmith Press

“What I love about reviewing books is how much I learn—not simply from what the authors have written, but from researching the techniques, influences and ideas that inform their writing. All of this makes me a better writer.”

Grief’s Apostrophe
Steven Ratiner
Beltway Editions, 2025
91 pp.

Ratiner leads us through the wilderness of grief, using references to sacred text and imagery, mythology, and common experiences as vehicles to plumb the depths of a feeling Self.

Magic Can’t Save Us  
by Josh Denslow
University of New Orleans Press (May 6, 2025)
176 pages

If you do not want to see, don’t read [these] book[s]. If you do not want to see, for God’s sake read [these] book[s].

The Soul We Share
Ricky Ray
Fly on the Wall Press, 2024
159 pp.

The soul in the title of the collection is not just shared between the human and his dog, but more, it is found among humans, nature, and the readers: we are all sharing the world, and we might need to be reminded of this fact.

How to Love a Black Hole  
by Rebecca Fishnow
Conium Press (March 4, 2025)
88 pages

What stands out in How to Love a Black Hole is the masterful way in which Fishow blends beauty and melancholy. The writing is introspective, filled with moments of quiet tension and powerful imagery that often leaves an undercurrent of unease.

A New Day
Sue Mell
She Writes Press (2024)
200 pp.

Mell’s style feels reminiscent of Lily King’s Writers and Lovers and Melissa Bank’s The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, blending intimacy and realism with a sharp eye for detail. Her writing captures small but powerful moments. One of the many lines that stuck with me reads: “Sometimes when you meet someone in a passing moment—a moment that’ll never repeat—they’ll share something with you that they didn’t even know they wanted or needed to say.” That feels like an apt description of the book, honestly. These insights pop up throughout the collection, making you pause and appreciate the beauty of the concept.

My Women
Yuliia Iliukha, translated by Hanna Leliv
128 LIT, 2024
84 pp.

Each vignette in My Women begins by introducing the woman at the center of the short story in one sentence. Although the women have subtle age markers, hair colors, or clothing styles, their identities are dictated by the war.

Calendar
Dawn Potter
Deerbrook Editions, 2024
109 pp.

The poems in this collection are closely aligned with the natural world, so much so that it’s really enticing to wander with the poet-speaker in this landscape that is both familiar (especially to those of us who live in New England) and unfamiliar, we can feel the thrum of life just below the visible world.

The Wives
Simone Gorrindo
Simon and Schuster, 2024
405 pp.

The Smoke of You
Jesse Amber
MilSpeak Foundation, Inc., 2023
213 pp.

People can acknowledge the modesty of their first home while also feeling a sudden, dizzying prosperity: most people don’t go into the military because they’re rich.

St. Matthew Passion
Gjertrud Schnackenberg
Arrowsmith Press, 2024
100 pp.

….a tour de force, a personal and introspective reflection on and with Bach’s sacred oratorio of the same title. At times musical commentary, and at others, musings on concerns of a more intimate nature, the text follows much of the libretto and musical movements in Bach’s famous work from 1727.

The Miro Worm and the Mysteries of Writing
Sven Birkerts
Arrowsmith Press (October 2024)
184 pp.

Birkerts talks about how the very act of writing distances us from what we’re writing about. Memories change when we capture them in words; they become stories we’ve crafted rather than moments we’ve lived.