Rocky Volotato's eighth full-length release is a resonant collection of songs propelled by the voice of a truly fine folk musician.

Just last month I reviewed B.K. Fischer’s Mutiny Gallery, a novel in verse. Some research I was conducting sent me to another title: Different Fleshes, another novel told through poetry, written by Albert Goldbarth.

Michael T. Young I used to read while nestled in a crook of maple branches, or seated on a slab of concrete that jutted into lake water, striders coasting the rumpled sheets. Reeds on the far shore needled the shallows writing a subtext into palms of sunlight alluding to trout and bass tunneling the deep, to the early alphabets of mud and rock. Mallards skirred the surface by day, bats skimmed it by night, their wings scratching brief...

Jaydn DeWald This village is even dreamier than the original. Who, for instance, would reproduce the old snakelike impressions of our bodies In the amber grass, or reenact us, in a thunderstorm, flinging our undergarments From a cliff? It was lifetimes ago, those times. Now we cast no shadow over the plucked swans, and are left to sleep in corners Like a mound of coats. The path to our rowboat is even narrower, dustier; gnats Blot out...

Michael Tyrell Almost spring, & our dictator’s new order: everyone in our country must French-kiss the frozen utility poles— the boulevards become maypoles of muffled wailing, move too much & you lose the mind, to keep the tongue & the mind pick a word to keep in your mind, blunt like starve or trowel or cudgel, say it will be coming up crocuses soon those clouds not the shoulders of ice-storms,...

Michael Tyrell For Rachel Wetzsteon (1967-2009) The friend, the late formalist who slips into my last REM cycle— whose new language I can’t get or hear in the swarming dream-terminal, but it’s urgent to try, there’s something she must tell me now, holding my wrist rougher than she means to— leaving a mark I know you won’t believe. You’ll say I’m wrong, it’s crazy, the wrist’s barely black & blue. As usual,...

Brandon Lewis That is how the last buffalo herd is culled. I read on, spilling drops of tea on the news page, letters darkened in spots. Across the road, a tree I can’t name buds red. To squint at its branch spellings, to iterate its Latin root does not tell the story quite. Time to relearn spring— clover leaf or cherry blossom, what arrives at first blush and second. And then the herds returning each season. Rangers say they...

Taylor Koekkoek “Elise. God, Elise. What’s happening?” “The nurse said you were awake.” “Elise, I don’t know what’s happening.” “You’re in the hospital.” “Why am I in the hospital? Why are you standing so far away?” “Your car was hit while you were in transit from Sacred Heart to, well here actually, so all’s basically well that ends where it was going to end. You’re driver dropped his cellphone or...

One of the most gifted and dynamic writers of our time discusses candidly life, liberty, and the pursuit of poetry.

As we await release of his forthcoming collection, "The Wanted," Brooklyn poet Michael Tyrell debuts and reads three new poems.