Scrap: Salvaging a Family by Luanne Castle - Review

What can I say about such a wonderful and poignant memoir, and so uniquely told through flash non-fiction? I do not read many memoirs. I would read more if they were written like this one. If I ever write one, you can be sure that I will approach in a similar way.

Luanne's relationship with her father was very complicated. My heart screamed for her as she related her experiences of bearing the brunt of his anger. This short snippet from page 76 expresses her experience in just a few sentences:

"I have never felt unloved. Hated, frightened, anxious, and claustrophobic, yes. But not unloved. I need to remember this every day. I'll make and tie a memory bracelet around my left wrist so I see it whenever I do anything."

This book speaks of generational trauma, and the psychological effects of a society that places stigma on certain realities such as being born out of wedlock, etc. When Rudy (Luanne's father) was born to an unmarried woman and given a last name that typically indicates being a "bastard." that stigma followed him his entire life and was where his anger stemmed from. 

It was heartening to see that Luanne and Rudy had established a peace between them in later years. Though their relationship remained complicated, it was clear that love was always present, even if it was not always communicated effectively.

My mom is a memoir reader and I plan to pass this book to her. I know she will enjoy it, and she will also relate to an extent, as she had a complicated relationship with her father. She often speaks of dealing with his anger when she was growing up. Unfortunately, she never received the apology she should have, but my grandfather died suddenly so I'd like to think that it may have happened at some point. I know they did have a better relationship as he grew older, but it was reticent at best because they didn't really see each other often. 

I thank Luanne for sharing her life with us readers. Reading this book was definitely an experience. I feel it will lead me to examine the relationship with my father, which has become complicated in adulthood due to circumstances I'll stay silent on for now.

I highly recommend this book. You'll be missing out if you don't read it.

Read Luanne's guest post on her interesting writing process here.

Read my review of her poetry collection, Our Wolves, here.

About the Book

The hybrid flash memoir Scrap: Salvaging a Family explores the stain of childhood fear and anxiety on the adult spirit and the experience of reconciling with an aging or dying parent. A daughter has grown up in a household with an angry and abusive father. He keeps the secret of his biological father’s identity from his daughter for decades. When the elderly man faces his mortality, he finally names his father. The more the daughter learns about her father’s early life and origins, the more she understands him which leads to forgiveness for the past.

Advance Praise

“Borne of shame and trauma, the secrets uncovered in Luanne Castle’s hybrid memoir reveal her father’s complicated childhood and the impact it had on their relationship. Told in brief, strikingly vivid fragments, and through various perspectives and forms, the book as a whole presents a deeply moving and unforgettable account. We readers are privileged to bear witness to this emotional excavation, one that ultimately reminds us that love is powerful even when it’s painful and that forgiveness is the only way forward. Scrap: Salvaging a Family is a gorgeous and brilliantly original collection. I highly recommend it.” ~Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works

The book is available at ELJ Editions and on Amazon.

About the Author

Luanne Castle’s poetry and prose have appeared in Copper Nickel, River Teeth, Your Impossible Voice, JMWW, Grist, Fourteen Hills, Verse Daily, Disappointed Housewife, Lunch Ticket, Saranac Review, Pleiades, Cleaver, Moon City, Moon Park, Anti-Heroin Chic, Bending Genres, BULL, The Mackinaw, The Ekphrastic Review, Phoebe, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Gone Lawn, Burningword, Superstition Review, One Art, Roi Fainéant, Dribble Drabble, Flash Boulevard, O:JA&L, Sheila-Na-Gig, Thimble, Antigonish Review, Longridge, Paragraph Planet, Six Sentences, Gooseberry Pie, Switch, and Ginosko. Her story, “Garden Seasons,” was selected for Best Microfiction 2026. She has published four award-winning poetry collections, and her ekphrastic flash and poetry collection Hunting the Cosmos is forthcoming from Shanti Arts in fall 2026. Learn more at luannecastle.com.

Visit the tour page to read more reviews here.

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Thoughts on The First Witch of Boston by Andrea Catalano

This was a difficult book to read right now. The terrible injustice of it. We say to ourselves, "This could not possibly happen again..." but I no longer believe that. Witnessing what is currently going on in our country. An innocent woman was shot and killed for doing absolutely nothing. Murdered because a man in power with a gun got angry. History repeats itself unfortunately and all the horrors of our history are being played out before our eyes. So yes, it could happen again and that truly is heartbreaking and terrifying. This IS a really good book, but I would advise waiting to read it if you're also sad and terrified by the current state of things.

Some quotes of note...

"You see, I figured out by a very young age something about men. The lot of them are not to be trusted. Indeed, I had learned in a most brutal manner, one that returned to me as a palpable nightmare each night I spent in the jail cell. Men are governed by their whims and passion far more than us women, yet ascribe such traits to us. It is the purest form of hypocrisy there is. It has existed since the dawn of our time. Think of Adam and Eve. Oh aye, the Devil tempted Eve with knowledge, and she thought to better herself. And so she took the bait, and then Adam grew curious and envious and wanted a piece of it all. Just like a selfish child. But go ahead and tell me again how man is governed by his mind and woman by her heart. They have lied to us from the beginning."

"The sky was ominously both light and dark. A tempest brewed over this land. Of course it did, for this land, this place at the edge of the world, was about to execute a woman for the sin of being a woman."

"...Lord help you all, all of you, this day. For you are about to execute an innocent woman. You are about to execute an innocent woman for the crime of being a woman, a woman who lived fully, spoke plainly, listened intently, observed acutely, intuited wisely, loved passionately. I am too much for this world of yours...I am a force that makes you quake!" 

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Singing the Forge: Poems by G.H. Mosson - Review

A diverse collection of poems, this collection confronts the personal, the stories of others, and even translated works by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. I have never read his poetry and found myself captivated by Mosson's translation of Nearness of the Beloved. Beautiful poem. 

I enjoyed the poems inspired by the works of the artist James Abbott McNeil Whistler. This one in particular was my favorite:

Whistler's Sketchbook: Circling Home

Village walls ivory in the moon's full tide

     where streets and doors hammock in intermeshes of darkness.

I follow a lone man who strolls home at midnight

     with steps that crack across the public silence.

Moonflood alludes to the songs of interiors

     of which the sunlight pencils mere outlines.

Moonlit walls cradle diaries and dreams

     shared inside with the day's earned bread.

I watch standing in the street's well

     as wind slips along the shuttered windows.

Half through this tour, I've gathered good sketches 

     touched at the root, touched at the limit.

The poetic vignettes based on historical accounts of trench warfare during World War I were striking. Thinking of the hundreds of thousands of people who perished at Verdun is eye-opening to the atrocity of war. Letter by a French Soldier, 1916, Found at Verdun was especially poignant for me...

I should've scribbled of this a week ago, but now we're here: 

The final road ahead -- "The Sacred Way" -- that snakes down

through farmer's fields to the rumble, we've arrived to camp

at its mouth.  Mammoth lines of men

file in, shoulder to shoulder past 

those filing out.  Marie, you'll know

where I am when you read of Verdun.  It was calm

in our last spot.   Grass sprung

in front of our trench.  German machine-guns raked us

just for an hour after supper.  Soon, I will be able to say

I was here, for this thrust

might end our trench life if we

can break through somewhere.  Now guess:

I picked up a lamb's wool vest

on the way, from an old villager, 

and chocolate -- which I've stashed --

all for my necklace -- the gold one Father

gave me. The wool will help me duck

winter frost in trench bogs

that's coming. Don't tell him though.

I can just picture this soldier, hunkered down in the trench, not knowing what will happen...not knowing if he will survive. It's the personal stories that are always the hardest.

This is definitely a collection for lovers of poetry, and even lovers of art. I highly recommend it.

About the collection:

Singing the Forge explores the singing of what’s shaped us and what we’ve shaped for ourselves.

Through poems at times personal, plus vignettes from men and women of the past two centuries in the book’s middle section, these poems offer mirrors of becomings.

Readers encounter melodies from diverse lives. Across free verse, meter, and poems of organic form, you might just see yourself.

Advance Praise:

“Through a series of beautiful meditative lyrics, Mosson links childhood and adulthood, journey and reckoning, memory and wonder. A humane and earnest poet, Mosson is as much attuned to ‘songless streets of Baltimore’ as to ‘trees’ unnamed relation to the world.’ He captures this attunement with carefully measured language and impressive precision. Many poems are probing observations of places and people, rendered in verbal landscapes revealing his debt to visual artists. Hans Hofman, Philip Guston, Henry Moore are three invoked in this volume. The poems in Singing the Forge create a philosophy of life centered around the idea of harmony with the universe – even if harmony’s always at the verge of disintegration. They should be paid attention to and cherished for this reason.”  

—Piotr Gwiazda, Professor of English, Univ. of Pittsburgh

“Mosson’s poems are magical, memorable and meticulous, speaking to the powerful pull of locales and weathers and loves, yet get pinned to the memories of a reader with lines like these, spoken by a physician in his old age: ‘The nursing home is out there like a shark/ that has swallowed so many of my patients one by one.’ Give a copy to someone you love but be sure to keep one for yourself.”
—Clarinda Harris, Professor Emeritus, Towson University

Available on Amazon and through David Robert Books.

About the Poet:

G. H. Mosson is the author of five prior books and chapbooks of poetry, including Questions of Fire (Plain View Press), Season of Flowers and Dust (Goose River Press), and Family Snapshot as a Poem in Time (Finishing Line Press). Two of the chapbooks are collaborative, Heart X-rays & Simultaneous Revolutions (PM Press). His poetry has appeared in The Tampa Review, California Quarterly, The Hollins Critic, The Potomac Review, Smartish Pace, Lines & Stars, Free State Review, and across the U.S. He has MA from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins, MFA from New England College, and his poetry has been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize. Mosson is a lawyer, father, writer, and yes, dreamer. For more, seek www.ghmosson.com. He is on X.

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The Eulogist by Terry Gamble - Review

This was a very good historical novel. A story of Irish immigrants to America in the decades before the Civil War. A tale of family, of the inhumane enterprise of slavery, abolition, and of human nature. Olivia was a very likable character for me. I enjoyed her telling of the story and I appreciated her unwillingness to believe what everyone else believed when it came to religion. In a conversation with her future husband, he said this to her: "It is one thing to stand in opposition to Christianity as you have done. Another altogether to truly understand people too compromised to worry about the condition of their souls. If there is a God--and like you, I wonder--would He not want us to turn our efforts toward saving each other rather than madly fretting if we ourselves are saved?" Later on, her brother says this to her in a letter: "But it is in human flesh they mostly deal...the trading of which would curdle your blood. I tell you, Livvie. It's as if these people had no heart or mind or sense of pain. I would deny that this was the very country to which we came so long ago, and with the highest of expectations."

These are the stories we need to read and continue reading, lest we forget the horrors in history and the people who suffered so greatly.

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Classics Club Spin #40 - The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

I actually finished my spin selection! Seemed like I wasn't going to, as I felt I was plodding along at the end.

I've had this book on my TBR for a long time. I am glad I finally read it. I've long been an Oscar Wilde fan. I was in his play, The Importance of Being Earnest in high school. 

Dorian Gray is a good novel. It raises questions about narcissism, morality, even the association of ugliness with aging (and with evil), and the old being less than. It also has one of my favorite quotes, "The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame." So true.

The only problem I had, and it's a minor one, were the long passage describing Dorian's interests, his fleeting passions, and Lord Henry's various monologues. Yet there's no denying that this is an excellent novel of Gothic fiction. 

I have seen two film adaptations of Dorian Gray. The 1945 and 2009 films. Both of them changed the story and I have to say I much preferred the book. Not really a surprise though, right? 

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Faraway Tables by Eric D. Goodman - Poetry Review

Poetry is a medium that really gets down to the bare bones of our world and our existence. Quoting from the poet's Afterword, "Poetry seems a perfect form for today's society--short, concise, and able to get a point or feeling or idea across succinctly." I could not agree more.

The poems in this collection touch on many subjects...life during and after the pandemic, world affairs, climate change, the ever changing and inevitable winding down of life. I was struck by the observations and how tuned in they are. As always, I feel like poetry "gets me." Most certainly, poetry always seems to understand life and the world. These poems are no different. 

A few quotes of verses/stanzas that were particularly striking to me...

from Toast to Friendship

These people in Kiev--people just like us--

no longer worried about 

when to go to the store for toothpaste,

but whether their sons and daughters

would live in an independent nation,

or live at all.

The war in Ukraine weighs heavily on our minds as it continues on and on. This poem captured the sorrow of what was, what is, and perhaps what could be again (we can only hope).

from Embracing Hermithood

No necessity to go out, no reason to drive,

hermit life made not only bearable--

embraceable.

The need to appear disappears.

The pandemic drives us into

our isolated caves. Gives us an excuse

to be what we want to be.

If the pandemic could be looked at in a more positive light, these stanzas demonstrate this. Perhaps the forced isolation made us slow down, as we were unable to go out as the social butterflies that many of us may be. Though the isolation was difficult at times, I also feel like it helped me to slow down and to be more centered, more focused on the now.

From Sassy

I see your collar on the table.

How I always wanted to sleep in

an extra ten minutes

when it was my turn to walk you.

How I long to walk with you--

at any hour--now.

The loss of a beloved pet. This one brought tears to my eyes. So often we take for granted their devoted companionship. Then they are gone and the memories of the joy they brought to our lives are a source of sorrow, and yet thoughts of them are cherished, happy memories. The loss of our four-legged family members is so difficult because they are with us for such a short time in the grand scheme of things. 

From Water Fall Blues

Driving a rented Skoda, you and I visit

the national park we remember from our last

visit to Croatia, and we find that our off-the-beaten-path

waterfall is nowhere to be found. Has it 

evaporated, or can we simply not find it?

A personal loss, worthy of your tears.

Climate change. Our vanishing waterways. A very real phenomena that is becoming more and more prevalent. A sad reality, and a harsh reality for people losing access to fresh water. Would that more world leaders and governments acknowledge it for the serious treat it is.

From Just Enough

But the mosh pits and energy,

vibration of the bass,

fist pumps and crowd surfing,

being there, part of the scene.

That was me. But not today.

This evening, I'd rather stay in.

He says "That was me." I say, this was me! Funny. So many of us can relate, I'm sure. As I listen to my 20-something sons speak of concerts they attend, despite the high cost of the tickets, I try to remind myself that this was once me. When life revolved around attending the next concert. But now, for me, home is where it's at.

From The Moment

So many perfect moments for scrapbook,

storybook memories.

You look up from your painting and smile,

the sound of the children's laughter

wafting up from the basement.

If I had to pick a perfect moment,

this moment

could very well be it.

So often we have photographs and mementos of the family trips, the big moments. But it's the little things, the fleeting memories of a tiny smile, a giggle, that really matter in the grand scheme of things.

From Submission to a Student Magazine

(from a writer who's burning out)

I shake your hand and want to cling to it,

to hold it until you understand,

until you feel what I feel

and know what it means to be one in

one hundred thousand writers.

Boy, I can relate to this one. As a writer, and aspiring to be a published author, it is often daunting thinking about how many writers, and books that are out in the world. That's when imposter syndrome kicks in, but I try to remember that it's the journey, not the destination, that really matters.

As you can see, I really related to this collection. I think you will too. An excellent debut collection. I hope to have the opportunity to read Goodman's future collections.

About the collection:

Faraway Tables is a mesmerizing collection of poetry that captures the monumental and the mundane with eloquent precision. Written largely during the COVID pandemic, these poems are imbued with a reflective depth that explores the essence of human experience—ranging from the personal to the geopolitical.

Goodman’s insightful observations of life’s transitions, especially in a world reshaped by pandemic isolation and technological shifts, reveal the courage it takes to love a life that’s continuously evolving.

Faraway Tables invites readers to savor the delicate flavors of experience, the tender beauty of other places and other times, and the enduring connections that define our shared humanity.

Advance praise:

“Faraway Tables carries its readers across boundaries–the personal, the political, and the geopolitical–and into those vital realms of memory and time that recall us to the comfort, the connections, and the love that see us home.” -Sherry Audette Morrow, Välittää

“Faraway Tables is a dazzling collection–a mixture of the mundane and the monumental that travels to marvelous times and places in the world and in the heart, with surprise detonated in many of the poems’ last lines. -Toby Devens, My Best Mid-Life Crisis (Yet)

“Eric D. Goodman writes with such a light hand. He sees endearing details in everyday happenstances–playful, erudite, perceptive. Norman Rockwell in words.” -Hezekiah Scretch, poetry editor, Fleas on the Dog Literary Journal

About the poet:

Eric D. Goodman lives and writes in Maryland. He’s the author of six previously published books of fiction. More than a hundred of his short stories, articles, and travel stories have been published in literary journals, magazines, and periodicals. Eric’s recent poetry has been featured in more than twenty publications, including Gargoyle Magazine and The Main Street Rag.

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Available on Amazon, Bookshop.org, and Yorkshire Publishing.

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Knowing by Mark Cox - Review

This is a long review, I know. But I felt this one so deeply, I could not in good faith make it short.

I can't quite put my finger on it. Perhaps it is just what poetry does. But it never fails, when I'm reading poetry, for a poem to hone in on exactly what I've been experiencing in my own life. It's uncanny. The poem is Gasoline. I'll share parts of it, the parts that resonate with my own recent experience, below.

Even after all these years after the divorce, I still sometimes dream we are together. She and I will be rushing hand in hand, late for a movie....In the dream, I actually know what is ahead...but there is something hopeful about the way she touches me, even still. I think there will always be a bond...The children will always be our children...

I am not a idiot. :) I know better than to pine for all that has vanished behind me. In fact, I am faced forward, usually; a striking picture of good health, braced headlong against the wind!...Still, I'm surprised to be here. I thought my life would turn out differently. I expected better from and for myself. And so, though reconciliation isn't something I want to happen in real life, in my dreams, it's ok...In those dreams, it's that fresh and untouched. It is a pleasure to feel that fully again, to have the family under one roof...That's all I wanted, was for life to be easy, right, fluid. It didn't seem like a lot to ask at the time.

Let me just say that I was in tears after reading this poem. I guess it helps to know that I'm not alone in this experience. I think this is why poetry is so special to those who love it. It seems we always find pieces of ourselves in the words.

Case in point...here's another from this collection that hits home for me...straight to my heart. Some parts of this poem, Storm Front, I share below...

...I miss my sons and daughter, but then I have always missed them, even when I held them. I was always reminding myself to be present, to demarcate significance. I was always a little lost within my own home. A form of Narcissism, I suppose, never feeling able to take in enough. Honestly, I fear now, as I become old, both remembering too little and too much. Either pitfall bears challenges.

 Yesterday, watching a video of my youngest at two or three, listening to my young, robust voice read his storybook, I found I couldn't breathe. I would never be that father again; those years were lost to me. I understood then how such panic takes one to the edge of living. There is a violence enmeshed in memory I do not fully comprehend, ends are implicit in it....

I know I'm sharing a lot from these poems, but I just can't help it. As a mother of sons, I loved this one...

Mortal Currents

Side against side ~ lain face-up in sleep ~ two lone clouds ~

one a stuffed bear ~ one my young son ~ across the ridge they

are passing ~ shorn apart ~ thinned to wings ~

Little sleeper, dear child ~ so far from me now ~ there are

but these few miles of peace ~ these brief wondrous nights ~

then we wake diminished ~ awash in mortal currents ~

My son, sweet boy ~ this is such a precious time ~ sleep long ~

churn deeper ~ dream ~ while you still own your face ~ while

you are still near to home ~ before the angel of forgetting ~

puts its cool lips to your eyelids ~ and you become a man

Just when I thought I was safe, the final poem, Wonder Bread, hit me and I was down for the count. Here are the final several lines at the end...

...Give me the simple life. If I do get Alzheimer's, let me get stuck reliving those mornings making lunches. the same thing over and over again. Everybody late, rushing around, cramming stuff into bookbags, and scurrying out to the car. Then piling in together. Just being there, buckled in next to each other, sitting in line, waiting to drop off at the front doors. I could wait like that. I could wait like that for as long as it takes.

That's it. I'm wrecked. It's hard to be sad, but it would be even harder not to have these memories. This collection is so wonderful. I can't even put it in the proper words. I will just say that if you love poetry, and you love families and relationships and memories and yes, some poignancy, then this is the collection to read. I know these poems will stay with me.

About the collection:

Mark Cox pulls no punches in these poems about loving, drinking, traveling, and screwing up his relationships and parts of his life. “Looking back for a low point marking the worst of my insobriety, it might be that signal moment I put out my cigarette in the holy water font of St. Paul’s Catholic church, right in front of the priest. . .” Sometimes sobering, oftentimes funny, but always honest, the poems in Knowing aim for the heart and soul of us all.

Praise for Previous Collections:

On Readiness

Thrilling prose poems from a cherished writer . . . . Cox gives lie to the common notion that prose poetry is too formless to count as real verse . . . . [He] is as careful with diction, rhythm, and even rhyme as one might be if they were writing strict alexandrines-and yet, his poems are as fluid and readable as Jack Kerouac’s novels. -Kirkus Reviews

On Sorrow Bread

Tony Hoagland has said Mark Cox is “a veteran of the deep water; there’s no one like him,” and Thomas Lux identified him as “one of the finest poets of his generation.” No one speaks more effectively of the vital and enduring syntaxes of common, even communal, life. -Richard Simpson

On Natural Causes

One of the best books I’ve read in years. In a style that’s brash, offbeat, tough-minded and big-hearted, these poems explore the fundamental mysteries of love between parent and child, self and other, self and world. Beyond the inventive language and formal range, what makes this work so memorable is Cox’s refusal to look away from even the hardest facts of “unadulterated sorrow.” -Alan Shapiro

About the poet:

Mark Cox has authored six other volumes of poetry, the most recent being Readiness (2018) and Sorrow Bread: Poems 1984-2015 (2017). He has a forty-year history of publication in prominent magazines and his honors include a Whiting Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Oklahoma Book Award, and The Society of Midland Authors Poetry Prize. He chairs the Department of Creative Writing at UNC Wilmington and teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA Program.

Available on Amazon and Bookshop.

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It Will Have Been So Beautiful by Amanda Shaw - Review

I'm thoroughly impressed with Shaw's debut collection. She touches on so many subjects. Her thoughts on home, love and loss, and what is going on in our world are eye-opening. She shows such insight when writing about human relationships. One underlying vibration that came through for me throughout the collection was the yearning for how things used to be. A hearkening to better times, before our world became so busy and jaded. 

I would be remiss not to mention the poem about the cat. "Felis Felix" is just an exact portrait of a cat. The final four lines, "Though not gifted with a range of sound / she lets us know with her clean tongue / You'll never own your lives as I do mine / however well you open doors." Truth...we may go out into the world, joining its hustle and bustle, but we will never be as free as a cat. 

I loved the poem touching on the waggle dance of bees (a form of animal language that honey bees use to communicate the location of food sources to other bees in their colony). "Dance, Dance, Evolution" says in its seventh stanza, "So it's a comfort / to hear there's a dance out there / to save a race from doom." A comfort indeed since bees are part of the biodiversity that humans depend on for survival. 

The title of this collection comes from a quote from Diane Arbus:

"While we regret that the past is not like the present and despair of its ever becoming the future, its innumerable, inscrutable habits lie in wait for their meaning. I want to gather them, like somebody's grandmother putting up preserves, because they will have been so beautiful."

What a quote. I'm definitely keeping it around for inspiration. 

It Will Have Been So Beautiful...indeed. An appropriate title for this stunning debut.

About the collection:

With urgency and compassion, humor and wonder, Amanda Shaw’s It Will Have Been So Beautiful examines the many dimensions of what it means to call anything “home,” including the earth as we know it. In a manner reminiscent of Eugène Atget, who wrote “will disappear” on his photographs of turn-of-the-century Paris, Shaw captures the unique melancholy of living in a time of unknowable change.

As she explores the line between love and loss, Shaw implores us to find a more profound commitment to life in all its forms. At times playful and ironic, the poems celebrate language’s sonic capacities, probing art’s potential to move us from mourning to joy.

About the Poet:

From the time she learned to read her first word — “Boom!” — Amanda Shaw has been in love with literature and language. She earned a BA in English from Smith College and has advanced degrees in education and writing. Equally at ease in a high school classroom and a World Bank boardroom, she is an expert teacher who continues to share her belief in the power of words with students of all ages.

Amanda began her career at a public high school in Brooklyn, where she was committed to student-centered curriculum and staff development as part of NYC’s small schools movement. After nine years in the city, she moved on to teaching ESL internationally and domestically, first in Rome and now in Washington DC. Witnessing poetry’s unique impact on students’ intellectual and emotional development galvanized her own writing. In 2020, she received her MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers.

In addition to actively participating in local and online writing communities, Amanda is the book review editor for Lily Poetry Review Books, where she supports emerging writers. Lily Poetry Review Books will publish her debut collection, It Will Have Been So Beautiful, in March 2024. The poems, written over 15 years, explore love and loss in personal and global contexts. For the past four years, Amanda has divided her time between New Hampshire, where she was born, and Washington, DC. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

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Available on Amazon, Lily Poetry Review, and Bookshop.org.

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Rebecca Hazell's The War Queens - Review

I always find funny the adage that women are the weaker sex. Women in history had a hand in so much of what went on politically, and yet few are remembered, or as well-known in history as their male counterparts. Once again, I credit historical fiction for bringing such a figure to my attention. Even as a history major in college, I had never heard of Queen Brunhilda of Austrasia. 

As I was reading The War Queens, I did some side reading on Brunhilda and much that is said about her is that she was power-hungry and driven. This would ultimately lead to her demise. On the other hand, Fredegunda, the rival queen is remembered as being behind many assassinations and political intrigues and yet she escaped the demise dealt to Brunhilda. Had she lived as long as Brunhilda did, I can't help but wonder if she might have met a similar fate. Though she seemed to always be triumphant in her schemes. 

Brunhilda of Austrasia (c. 547 - 613)
Antoni Zürcher, c. 1830

I have read the first book in Rebecca Hazell's The Tiger and the Dove series, The Grip of God (review here). She has a real talent for telling historical stories. The amount of research conducted is always astounding, leaving no doubt of historical accuracy. That being said, the stories are never dry. Queen Brunhilda is a complex character. She is driven, though I never feel she is power-hungry. She cares about her family, and the people of Austrasia...that is her motivation. Even her rivalry with Fredegunda never comes off as solely fueled by revenge over her sister. Fredegunda is a true narcissist who cares only about herself, something that shows even with the mothering of her children. History has not told us much about these two women so I'm sure there is more to the story. But I can't help thinking that Hazell got it exactly right. 

As an aside, I return to the whole "weaker sex" implication. Who is more weak than a king who allows himself to be persuaded by feminine wiles and sex? Oh, it's obvious that King Chilperic is the weakest of the four brother kings. This is why I question why so many faulted Brunhilda as being power-driven when she always only wanted to work as a partner to her husband, and subsequently to her son (and grandsons) as regent. Yet here we have Fredegunda influencing a known weak king, but nothing is said by others of her being driven and power-hungry. In this, I circle back to Hazell's deft storytelling. Fredegunda is very good at disguising her motives and making it look like it was all the king's idea in the first place. Brunhilda wears her heart and convictions on her sleeve, and ends up paying for it. 

As is probably obvious, I really loved this book. There is truly nothing better than historical fiction that makes us think, and spurs us to look beyond the story. This book is perfect for anyone who loves history, and for anyone who loves a great story.

About the book:
By the sixth century, the Roman Empire is already lost to tribal invasions, brutal Merovingian Franks have seized Gaul from the civilized Romanized Visigoths, and a dark age has descended across Europe. Now a deadly rivalry arises between two Merovingian queens. Brunhilda and Fredegunda are equals in beauty and intelligence, but opposite in vision and temperament. When the Franks demand a royal bride, Visigoth Brunhilda marries into a world that despises women. Suddenly thrust into power and repeatedly facing loss and grief, she seeks to revive a new Rome based on justice and prosperity. Her implacable foe, Fredegunda, is a former slave concubine who lives only for personal power. Insanely jealous of high-born Brunhilda, she uses seduction, assassination, war, and even witchcraft in her campaign to destroy her. Can Brunhilda survive this onslaught of evil? Can her vision survive?

About the Author:
Rebecca Hazell is a writer and artist whose nonfiction books for children garnered awards and critical praise, and were optioned for a television series. Her historical trilogy—The Grip of God, Solomon's Bride, and Consolamentum—is still in print after more than a decade. Before entering the world of books, she created educational materials for high schools that were used across the United States. She lives on Vancouver Island with her husband; her grown children and sister live nearby.

Find out more by visiting www.rebeccahazell.com or follow Rebecca on Instagram @RebeccaHazellbooks

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Night of the Hawk: Poems by Lauren Martin - Review

This is my favorite kind of poetry. Poems that speak of the woman's experience, of family, of everything that makes us happy, or sad, in our lives. Moments that are sometimes tragic, sometimes joyful...and often somewhere in between. 

The poem below really spoke to me. I had to share it in its entirety. As a postmenopausal woman myself, I can certainly relate to it. Women beyond that "expiration date" are often forgotten, or our opinions seem at times to not matter, as they mattered once. Still, there are those who know that we came before and that our voices do still matter.

MY EXPERIENCE AS A POSTMENOPAUSAL WOMAN

Is we are ignored
     Everywhere - even in poetry

Somehow not romantic or feminist
enough
Our wisdom excluded as undignified
As undignified as women running into the cold night with hot 

flashes peeling layers

"We're not helping men into the
conversation by making them feel
emasculated"   I say

And experience a new version of "blame the victim."

One in which there is no respect for the 

elder authority of the endocrine system 

and years of misogyny with no
conversation. Where we screamed into 

the Grand Canyon that blew dust back 

into our faces on the hot wind

I am told that I lack some insight that is 

honored and reflected in youth     rather
     must reflect my inability as an 

"old feminist" to differentiate between my 

"internalized misogyny" and what is
unbalanced

To be told that you have no idea when 

We paved the way
When I am standing on the shoulders 

of my own mother

You don't see me

And maybe that's because you're 

Not looking down
To the foundation of     my shoulders
To the years of my sleeves rolled up 

And boots tied high
At rallies and secret activist meetings 

Countless abuses of power 

Soul changing assaults

I can see the context of our culture
Then and now
And am happy you are bashing
The door open
Breaking the
Glass ceiling
But it's not because     we didn't try
Of course we did
Our height lets you touch
                                 the glass with
your hammer

Another poem that struck me, "OF TIMES TRAVELLED" because of this verse...

So the choice is

Lonely alone

or Lonely with

And how many women

Feel this

Or are discounted for their substance

Since my divorce 10 years ago, I have chosen to remain alone. Going along with what the verse says, I'd rather be lonely alone than lonely when I'm with someone. And you know what...I'm not really lonely.

This book of poems is an excellent volume to add to anyone's poetry collection. It is certainly going to be added to mine.

About the collection:

When I have wandered
long enough
what am I still beholden to?

Ifá. Nature. Illness. Love. Loss. Misogyny. Aging. Africa. Our wounded planet. In this sweeping yet intensely personal collection, Lauren Martin tells the untold stories of the marginalized, the abused, the ill, the disabled—the different. Inspired by her life’s experiences, including the isolation she has suffered as a result both of living with chronic illness and having devoted herself to a religion outside the mainstream, these poems explore with raw vulnerability and unflinching honesty what it is to live apart—even as one yearns for connection.

But Night of the Hawk is no lament; it is powerful, reverential, sometimes humorous, often defiant—“ Oh heat me and fill me / I rise above lines ”—and full of wisdom. Visceral and stirring, the poems in this collection touch on vastly disparate subjects but are ultimately unified in a singular to inspire those who read them toward kindness, compassion, and questioning.

Advance praise:

“The poems gathered here address themes of survival, chronic illness, shamanism, and feminism against the backdrop of daily life. . . . The diversity of experience examined makes for a collection that is both full and human. A whole life in one volume.” —Kirkus Reviews “Night of the Hawk is a luminous and numinous collection about women and men, about betrayal and forbearance, about endurance, death, and art, and, most essentially, about the search for a sacred path through life. There is so much love in these poems” –Michael Laurence, award-winning playwright “Lauren’s poems drop into your psyche and ripple outward, echoing in the moments of life. Their beauty haunts.” –Sallie Ann Glassman, Head Manbo Asogwe of La Source Ancienne Ounfo

About the Poet:

Lauren Martin is a psychotherapist, poet, and a devoted Ìyânífá. She lives in Oakland, California. Lauren studied poetry at Sarah Lawrence College. She spent years writing without submitting her work due to a long shamanic journey, which led her to both Ifá, and to the writing of this collection of poems. Learn more at: www.laurenmartin.net

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Arranging Words: Poems by Fran Abrams - Review

What a clever little collection! Abrams knows how to use words precisely to bring out a chuckle, or even to make that light bulb come on in your head..."Hey, I've always thought/wondered that myself." As in, On the Tip of my Tongue, she talks about how when you talk to someone with a pierced tongue, you really have to work at not looking at it the entire time. And then there's this one, which touches on something I've always wondered myself. Why do we have names for some things and then just don't for others? From We Have No Name for Them...

When a parent loses a child, 

we have no name for that. 

When a boy loses his sister, 

there is not word to label him. 

Whether his sister died a victim

of car crash, shooting, or illness, 

we have no vocabulary 

for those who remain.

The poem Three Little Words showcases how powerful just three little words can be. A stanza from the poem:

Knowledge is power

Just do it

Nothing is impossible

And the hilariously funny All Ears. Seriously, the image in my head on this one. It also reminded me of a Shel Siverstein poem. 

This is such a fun collection. Things are so serious in the world right now. Sometimes it's nice to read something lighthearted to take us away from it all. This collection does just that.

About the collection:

Arranging Words is Abrams’ second chapbook collection. It is a series of light-hearted poems that asks the reader to look at words from a new perspective. These poems approach letters, words, and everyday phrases in a way that pokes fun at the eccentricities of the English language.

For example, her poem titled “K Knows How to Hide and Seek” begins with the line “Kknocks twice, but we only hear him once,” reminding us how often “k” is a silent letter.

The poem “Poetry Exercise” plays on the meaning of the word “exercise” with the line “Brain cells stretch, lift your arms, reach for words.” Phrases are deconstructed into literal meanings, such as in the poem “Beside Myself” that asks, “Am I myself or the one beside myself?”

This collection illuminates the quirks of the English language in a lively, humorous way while demonstrating a love for words themselves.

About the Author:

Fran Abrams lives in Rockville, MD. Her poems have been published in literary magazines online and in print and appear in more than a dozen anthologies. In July 2022, the title poem of this book, “Arranging Words,” was a finalist in the 2022 Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry. Her two previous books are: I Rode the Second Wave: A Feminist Memoir (2022) and The Poet Who Loves Pythagoras (2023). Learn more at www.franabramspoetry.com and Connect on Facebook at Fran Abrams, Poet.

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Gold: Heart of a Warrior by Eden Robins - Review

Full disclosure...I am not a reader of romance. Magic romance, paranormal romance, etc. I generally steer clear of. Though I don't consider myself a prude (and I'm a Secular Pagan so it's not due to religion either), I am not a fan of sexual tension, or sex scenes in general. If it's there, I'm going to skim over it. 

So, I'm going to separate this review from that aspect of the book. Just a warning though. If you are also not a fan of the above, this is not the book for you. However, if you can get past that, and you like Greek mythology and retellings/reimaginings, then this book is most definitely for you. 

I have always loved Greek mythology. Clash of the Titans was my jam. In this novel we get a twist. A reincarnated Pandora in the present day. A story which splits gods and humans into precious metals. The "good" gods and their warriors are Golds. The baddies are Silver. Humans are Bronze. Oh, and surprise, surprise...Zeus is a jerk. So, as usual we have the gods meddling and mucking things up. I was getting into the story and excited for the outcome because the story does draw one in. However, at times it was difficult to suspend disbelief. Some things just didn't add up. Then it just...ended. I guess I didn't realize this was going to be a series. 

In all, if you like magic romance/paranormal romance, I think you will like this book.

About the book

It’s just gonna be one of those days…Empathic healer and business owner, Dora Alexander decided to celebrate her 25th birthday by exploring the stalagmites and stalactites in Kartchner Caverns. Kinda nerdy? Maybe, but you do you, right? Things take a nasty turn when an earthquake rocks the cave, leaving her alone in complete darkness. Searching for a way out, she accidently awakens an immortal warrior who’s kind of cranky after his 100-year nap. Wouldn’t you be?Philoctetes, one of Demeter’s immortal Gold warriors wakes up to the disturbing sound of a female sobbing. Thinking she’s one of the Silver demons he’s sworn to hunt down and destroy, he almost kills her before realizing she’s human. Correction. Turns out she’s not just human. She’s also the woman responsible for sending his kind to hell and causing woe and misery for the entire human race.Dora never asked to be Pandora reborn. And she certainly didn’t ask to be paired up with an insanely hot immortal demon hunter on a mission to save the world and redeem them both. But The Fates seem to have their own quirky ideas. One of them being if she and said hot demon hunter consummate the inferno like attraction blazing between them, they’ll simply cease to exist, with any memory of their time on earth erased forever.Oh goody, the day just got worse.

About the author

Eden Robins believes in second chances. Eden’s journey as an author started in 2000 with the release of her first book, a time travel romance entitled, Never Until Tomorrow. Over the course of the next eleven years, Eden wrote and shared nine stories from her heart with her readers. After a divorce and big changes to her personal life, Eden’s writing came to a crashing halt and her path took a different direction.

Twelve years after her last romantic tale was published, Eden found a home for her latest novel, Gold: Heart of A Warrior with Champagne Book Group. A magical, modern-day romantic romp into Greek myths come to life, this story gave her a second chance to do what she loves. Write. Connect with Eden Robins and check out her blog, Living the Path.

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