Gatsby. All you have to do is say the name, and you automatically conjure up images of flappers, reckless flamboyance, bathtub gin, untold riches, complex lives and lies and so much more. Gatsby has become so much a part of our lives – with several movie versions of varying quality and accuracy as well… Read More “Talking Classics — 10” by John Yamrus
I’ve got a neat little hardcover edition of CRIME AND PUNISHMENT that I bought a long time ago. It was published by something called “Collector’s Library”, which has some sort of a connection to Barnes And Noble, and I probably picked it up on one of their tables where they show all their… Read More “Talking Classics — 9” by John Yamrus
The World Stands on Its Head: a review of Between Two Fires by John Grey. ISBN:978-81-19228-29-4. Cyberwit.net. First Edition: 2023. $15.00 paper The world stands on its head in a moment, in a poem, in poem after poem in John Grey’s new collection, Between Two Fires. The speaker is an ordinary person performing an extraordinary feat… Read More A review of Between Two Fires / John Grey By Peter Mladinic
Knives on a Table available at: https://www.amazon.com/Knives-Table-Peter-Mladinic/dp/1737621908/ Publisher: Better Than Starbucks 100 pages *** Right out of the gate, Mladinic’s textured collection of poems invites the reader to sit up and pay attention. The striking cover, Klee’s “Senecio,” sets me up for a world that’s both humorous and dead serious. I enter this world with… Read More “Sun Reflected off the Bus Windows” Book Review by Caroline Goodwin
It would be a shock to know that anyone ever accused this poet of being boring. She is the opposite of boring throughout this collection. She is plain spoken, lucid, clear, in poems neither plain nor predictable. She masters metaphor, personification, the surreal image, the exacting comment, always with her finger on the pulse of… Read More Expect the Unexpected, a Review of Nolcha Fox’s “My Pelvis Wants to Be Elvis,” by Pete Mladinic
In the third, final section of this book appear the lines “one lone firefly flickers on,/ a luminescent messenger/ of hobo lullabies.” If that messenger were human, in a long coat scuttle across an avenue, the message, on a piece of paper in one pocket might be one word: resilience. These poems invite reads to revel… Read More Luminescent Messenger, a Review of Tohm Bakelas’ “Cleaning the Gutters of Hell,” by Pete Mladinic
These tightly wrought poems chart a mother-daughter emotional landscape, a heart chart of mother-daughter nearness, distance, and daughter memory. They are about the poet’s mother’s illness and death, but more so life, the mother’s life, the mother and daughter’s life together, and the daughter’s life without her mother. The poems reflect the poet’s struggle in… Read More Emblems of Without You, a Review of Nolcha Fox’s “Cancer Isn’t Just a Constellation” by Pete Mladinic
Close your eyes, and you’ll be on the glossy lanes of the bowling alley with Paul, on the living room floor sitting cross-legged with Leda, and in the classroom of inattentive young students and the elderly lady in the back, listening, whose mouth looks like “a ruined white flower.” John Yamrus is tough and tender. … Read More About That Dead Cat on the Lawn, a review of John Yamrus’ “People (and other bad ideas)” by Pete Mladinic
My Friend Tells Me She Wants a Dog, Laura Stamps’ new chapbook published by Kittyfeather Press, is a sequence of 16 poems published previously in journals. The poems, in a time sequence, read like a short story. Uplifting, a testament to the human spirit, they epitomize the saying, stay positive. Their darkness is understated very… Read More Buddy and His Friends, a Review of Laura Stamps’ “My Friend Tells Me She Wants a Dog” by Pete Mladinic
Bottle of Smoke Press. 2023. $7.00 paper. Limited edition of 110 copies. The word cancer appears three times in John Dorsey’s chapbook of seven poems. The author lives with cancer, and that fact is pervasive in these poems, and also low key, met straight on, with no delusion or sentimentality. The chapbook’s first words, “this is life,”… Read More Not Alone: Review by Pete Mladinic of “Essential Heartbeats for Fried Chicken Nights,” by John Dorsey
You can read it here: ps://www.thesunlightpress.com/2023/08/20/twenty-four-poems-by-john-yamrus/ In a career spanning more than 50 years as a working writer, John Yamrus has published 35 books. He has also had more than 3,000 poems published in magazines and anthologies around the world. His newest book is Twenty Four Poems (Meat For Tea Press). Interested in submitting? https://chewersmasticadores.wordpress.com/submission-guidelines/
Life had brought him to a crossroad. Well, perhaps it was more like a roundabout with five or six exits, and he was stuck in the wrong lane. Because every time his arrogance had brought him to a fork in the road, he had chosen to keep going straight. Francis had made his own path.… Read More The Baritone by Nigel Byng
Chewers 