Judah's Lion

I was a bit wary when I received Judah's Lion. Its title and that of many of its poems made clear to me that we were going to be talking about The Almighty, and not in a sort of New Age everything-is-divine kind of way; I’m talking about Old Testament smiting and personal conversations. As a member of the liberal elite who often chuckles evilly as she writes, I had a hard time getting into it at first. Cruddy, I thought, throwing it down. I’ve wasted a good poetry pick on a nurse who writes about Jesus. The second time I picked it up, I read it straight through and loved it.

Poems from the Women’s Movement

It’s debatable whether collections of work by “women poets” (or, shudder, “poetesses”) are legitimate groupings. I tend to regard these types of collections with a raised eyebrow, imagining a group of women having an outdoor party, having been shut out of some stuffy jackets-required club, now herded together and pushed through the doors all at once to their dismay.

Women Writing Africa: The Northern Region

Women Writing Africa: The Northern Region is the fourth in a series of volumes, following The Southern Region, The Eastern Region, and _[West Africa and the Sahel](http://www.amazon.com/gp/pro

Praise Song for the Day: A Poem for Barack Obama's Presidential Inauguration

Elizabeth Alexander’s Praise Song for the Day: A Poem for Barack Obama's Presidential Inauguration captures the essence of hope. Alexander unites all readers through illustrations of day-to-day activities. She begins “Each day we go about our business/Walking past each other, catching each other’s/Eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.” This opening stanza illuminates the monotony of daily activities by breathing new life into them.

Queer Optimism: Lyric Personhood and Other Felicitous Persuasions

“The year I told my parents I was gay was also the year of my first encounter with depression,” writes Michael Snediker in the opening line of his detailed introduction. This line struck a nerve as I know a few people who, personally, are still on the same boat. I have seen an aunt and an uncle, a lesbian and gay respectively, ostracized by the conservative, über-religious society they live in.

Breaking Poems

In her third book of poetry, award-winning Palestinian American poet Suheir Hammad explores the resilience of women’s bodies across borders in a fluid set of poems entitled Breaking Poems. Hammad embraces life at the border, refusing to translate her identity to fit a bounded-identity construct of what it means to be Palestinian or American. She uses a diasporic language, blending anglicized Palestinian Arabic with English.

The Scattered Papers of Penelope: New & Selected Poems

The Scattered Papers of Penelope: New and Selected Poems presents compositions drawn from Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke's extensive oeuvre and includes five new pieces. A native of Greece, Anghelaki-Rooke was the winner of the Greek National Prize for Poetry and the Greek Academy’s Poetry Prize. Her poetry is lusty; corporeal; and rooted in flesh, color and tactile sensation. Verse and prose both vibrate with descriptions of a lush and living Greece.

40 dayz

Staying true to her moniker Motion, Wendy Braithwaite’s _40 dayz _ takes readers on a fast-paced word journey. Doubling as a spoken word poet and hip-hop artist, it’s no surprise that Motion’s poems are full of a rhythm often unattainable by most poets. The subjects she writes on seem to develop their very own heartbeats—some thunder while others throb slowly. Of the many subjects Motion covers, a primary topic is, of course, female issues. "Wombstory," a chapter in this collection, includes five poems that examine womanhood. "Blues" transforms the act of sex into a musical experience.

Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns

As a newer reader of and listener to poetry, I often find it overly dramatic or flowery for my tastes. When I started reading Andrea Gibson’s collection, Pole Dancing To Gospel Hymns, I was not drawn to her lyrical love poems, which I read too cynically, but as I read on, I was drawn in by her humor, self-reflection, and earnest political analysis.

The Real Thing: Words And Sounds Vol. 3

Jill Scott was introduced to the world on her aptly titled, brilliant, neo soul debut Who is Jill Scott? (Words and Sounds Vol.1). She co-wrote the classic Grammy winning "You Got Me," performed by The Roots with Erykah Badu, and we've been discovering more of her ever since. With soulful, hip hop poetry style here on her third proper studio release, she continues the trend, but with more jazzy flourishes.

The Lyrics

Fanny Howe’s poetry collection, The Lyrics, includes poems that thrive on the lyric poem’s conventions; the poems include both the personal world of the speaker, as well as the universal world. Each poem is also a lyric by itself; each lyric comprises The Lyrics spoken about in the title.

Willow Room, Green Door

Deborah Keenan's new poetry collection Willow Room, Green Door includes selections from her previous books - such as Kingdoms, The Only Window that Counts and Household Wounds - in addition to her most recent work. In a collection that spans a lengthy period of time, the reader gets a lovely sense of inhabiting a changing world with the poet, of walking through time, both historical and personal.

When I Met the Wolf Girls

The title of this children’s book caught my eye since my family supports Wolf Park, a local wolf education and research facility located in Battle Ground, Indiana. This delicate story of family and friendship, set in picture-book format, recants the ordeal of two feral sisters discovered in Midnapore, India in the 1920s.

Dredging for Atlantis

Writing is in the eye of beholder, especially when it comes to poetry. This slim book is Tabios' fourteenth collection of poems. It is divided into three parts.