Letter From Reviews Editor

The five reviews in this issue of the Poetry Project Newsletter present a wide range of poetic entrances and exits. Beginning with erica kaufman’s take on From Our Hearts to Yours: New Narrative as Contemporary Practice, edited by Rob Halpern and Robin Tremblay-McGaw, a historical continuity opens up around questions of social practice vis-à-vis poetic creation. kaufman leads us through this enormous anthology, while noting that taking on such an undertaking is “scary.” Luckily, our reviewers for this issue continue to “generously invite” us into these spaces, asking us to come when we want and leave when we feel most comfortable. In a corresponding space and time, Timothy Otte compels us to read Craig Santos Perez’s multivolume from unincorporated territory, again forming a sort of portal through which we might enter a momentous and lengthy set of works without delineating that this might be the only way in. Joshua Escobar follows suit in reading Lauren Russell’s What’s Hanging on the Hush, noting a similar subversive “sampling” of documentary material (with many guest and musical appearances) in creating lyric. The lyric reappears in Laura Henriksen’s musical registering (via Frank Ocean) and acknowledgement of “self-control” by way of reading Jacqueline Waters’s Commodore. Finally, M. Ryan Murphy examines Caroline Crumpacker’s question in Astrobolism: “What do we look like outside…. controls?” The following reviews relinquish full control without losing attention and close listening, the soundsof participating in the nonsovereignty of everyday practice, coming, going, staying for a while.

If you would like to send a review for a future issue, please query: reviews.ppnl@poetryproject.org

John Rufo