A few snapshots from October reviews…

Excerpt from review by R.P. Finch for popMATTERS

Here Is a Game We Could Play – by Jenny Bitner
Acre Books, 2021

“It is often the downfall of a debut novel’s narrative structure that plot points are separated by lengthy stretches of filler exposition, unnecessary description, or other tangential material. In Bitner’s debut, the plot points are indeed separated by lengthy stretches, but these are the heart and soul of Here Is a Game We Could Play, the mother lode from which we mine the vignette gems that inform the reader’s understanding of this honest and anxious narrator. It is here, in the interstices, that we become aware of the granular backstory of Claudia’s idiosyncratic fears and obsessions, leavened with unexpected doses of humor.”

Excerpt from review by Sophie Thomas for Magma Poetry

Our Cancers – by Dan O’Brien
Acre Books, 2021

“Like all those who write about their own illness and suffering, O’Brien offers up the deepest recesses of his pain for the rest of us to pick over and examine. These are spare and beautiful poems to live by.”

Excerpt from review by Leila Greening for the Oxford Review of Books

Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking – by C.T. Salazar
Acre Books, 2022

“Salazar’s poetry deliberates on the spiritual experience of connection and desire. His debut full-length collection, Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking focuses on the history of violence in the American South and how an individual’s loss of faith in God could be reconciled by discovering the holiness of human connection. Salazar emphasizes the value of faith: ‘I said I wanted to worship something, even if it’s just the black / beetles in your yard crawling around hurriedly / like pieces of a star trying to reassemble itself.’ This desire for intimacy is fundamental to Salazar’s poetry.”