Click on the letters above to see reviews by authors last name.

Authors - B

Counterterrorist Poems (Pudding House 2002) are songs wrung from the tragedy of the World Trade Center bombing by the talented Anne Babson. These direct, unadorned poems speak of our troubled times, the similarities and differences between each of us, native-born or foreign. The chapbook ends effectively with an extended eight page meditation.

Pinnacles & Plains (Finishing Line, 2004) gives us a generous sampling (26 pages) of Kaye Bache-Snyder's well-crafted, poems. These poems are simple in the best sense of the word, portraying mountain and plain and radiating her deep love for the physical landscape as she captures it in finely wrought detail.

Carol W. Bachofner 's debut chapbook, Daughter of the Ardennes Forest (Main Street Rag, 2007), charts the horror of war and the impact of post war PTSD on both the soldier and the entire family in this close-to-home collection. These fine, direct poems are also hymns of love and forgiveness, a cleansing, as the poem "celebrates the turn towards Spring." Recommended. (added 4/07) 

The winner of the 2000 Snail's Pace Poetry Prize was an outstanding book of contemporary sonnets by Barry Ballard: Green Tombs To Jupiter, He followed this in 2002 by A Time To Reinvent (Creative Ash Press) and in 2003, Plowing to the End of the Road (Finishing Line Press). The poet's precise imagery and metaphor make each sonnet shine like a well-cut gem and he never lets the form subtract from the finely crafted blank-verse narrative.

Toronto poet Edward Baranosky's talent for formal poetry such as the glosa and a host of oriental forms (haiku, sijo, tanka sequences, etc.) are showcased in a set of limited edition chapbooks from the EAB Press: The Outer Coast (2002), Raku (2001), Windbirds (2001),The Doryman (2000), Spindrift (2000), Year of the Dragon (2000), Raindancing (1999), Purgatory Gorge(1999), Sundancing (1999), Eye of the Storm(1998), and Ghostdancing(1997).

Wendy Barker's Poems from Paradise (Word Tech 2005) are spare and elegant lyrics, a combination of Zen sensibility and understated eroticism. Jack Myers describes them as " stripped-down, naked little beings who've taken off their Sunday best and gone skinny-dipping in the rock quarry of desire. A lovely book. (added 9/06)

 Reading the Alphabet of Trees (Finishing Line, 2007) is a lovely thirty page chapbook by Philadelphia poet Lisa Alexander Baron. These are poems of memory; many feature a difficult-to-love father, whose presence and absence dominate the book. Interspersed are other poems of photographs and lullaby, waking childhood memories. The language is unforced, natural, musical in this journey of remembered pain and present healing. Added 9/07.

Although Ellen Bass's I'm not your laughing daughter was first published in 1978 (University of Massachusetts Press), my local bookstore was able to obtain a copy for me. Although better-known for her self-help books for survivors of abuse, Ellen Bass is a poet of consummate skill and this mainly autobiographical book is both a personal and a poetic triumph. Next came Mules of Love, from BOA, filled with compelling and intimate narrative poems, one of 2002's best. The most recent is The Human Line (Copper Canyon, 2007), with its exploration of both crucial moral issues (such as war and poverty) and the endearing absurdities of everyday life. This is a graceful, light-filled book with wonderful images and the perfect mixture of loss and love. (updated 6/07)

 Marilyn Bates' It Could Drive You Crazy (Small Poetry Press, 2002) vibrates with spirit and irreverence. These are brave, gutsy poems that confront human frailties with clear-eyed compassion, without illusion. We trust these poems that delight with the right words, the right rhythms. Now the book has been reissued with thirteen fresh poems added, thirteen of the older poems "retired.." The book has lost none of its sexy, in-your-face-qualities that make it so appealing. It has lost none of its courage and zest for life. There is also an earlier chapbook, Mixed Blood (Main St. Rag Press, 1998), which mines similar territory.. (revised 11/07).

Grace Bauer first brought us the women of the Bible in the fascinating, wry and witty persona poems that comprise The Women at the Well (Portals Press, 1996). These women are not simpering, docile, paper-doll myths, but real creatures: longing, sassy, sensuous, rebellious and sometimes irreverent. Next there was Beholding Eye (Custom Words, 2006), a collection of smart, funny and chic ekphrastic poems which "consider matters of identity, power, class, anger and erotica," (Hilda Raz). Brilliant!   (REVIEWED by JM 4/07) And now, there is Retreats & Recognitions (Lost Horse Press, 2007), winner of the Idaho Prize for Poetry (2006). Again, the comic and elegiac combine to make poignant and evocative poems of intelligence and charm. The fresh imagery and imaginative range make this a highly recommended book. (Belatedly updated 11/07)

The Almost Sound of Drowning (Main Street Rag,2008) marks poet Joan E. Bauer's debut with a book-length collection. In this incandescent collection, she looks for the meaning of our chaotic world, for the essential humanity no matter what the circumstance; she finds reasons to love. As Jan Beatty says in her review, the question posed by the book is: what have we learned as citizens of the world and what does it take to continue? This book praises the courage it takes to do just that. There is a wide range here and an unstoppable heart.  (added 2/09).

Post-Freudian Dreaming (Amherst Writers & Artists Press, 2002) combines poems, short stories and creative non-fictional pieces of Dick Bentley. Sometimes witty and off the wall, sometimes urbane and upper-class, they are always imaginative and charming. He follows this with A General Theory of Desire (Patchwork Farm Press, 2006), where his poetic voice is more to the fore, still edgy and penetrating, still unique as to subject and treatment, but intelligent and imaginative. (posted addition 11/08).

Pam Bernard's My Own Hundred Doors (Bright Hill, 1996) and Across the Dark (Main Street Rag, 2002) both won prizes for their beautifully lucid, compelling poems. Emotionally intense yet controlled, she explores the nature of family and the larger world in delicate yet edgy lyrics.

George Bilgere's Haywire (Utah, 2006) was the winner of the May Swenson award for its truth-telling humanness and ease of language. Both Billy Collins and Edward Field praise the poet for his often sassy, sometimes gritty bittersweet poems. As Field remarks, it is a surprisingly happy book. I concur with the praise. The poems are lively, fresh, and engaging without prettying anything up. An earlier book, The Good Kiss (Akron, 2002) is all about the many forms of love. The poems are surprising, and written by a poet who knows his craft; his line breaks are a constant, skillful delight. Both books are highly recommended. (updated 10/07)

Ithaca poet Peggy Billings brings us Half-Light (Vista Periodista, 2006), a poetic accounting of a life richly lived in the things that matter. The poet, who has devoted her life to working for racial justice, civil rights, community action, peace, international affairs and women's issues, recounts the stories of her life in imagistic poems that ring with authenticity of experience and artistry in their telling. They rove through the places of their creator's own life: Mississippi, Manhattan, Korea, the Finger Lakes countryside, and others, as they redefine home, love, and the moments that matter. (New 4/09)

George Bishop is the author of a new chapbook, Love Scenes (Finishing Line Press, 2009), poems taken from home, amid familiar people, places and things, but the stories are so wrapped in smoke and dream, girded in unique and startling metaphor, they transform the familiar to strange and different images and take them to another place. 11/09. www.finishinglinepress.com. 

Michelle Bitting's  first full length poetry collection, Good Friday Kiss (C & R Press, 2008), is outstanding. These poems touch (and often rend) the heart. The craft never lags as the poet deals with her brother's suicide, her son's mental difficulties, her parents' - and her own - aging, the memories of youth, and the crises of mid-life. Focused, visceral, wise and unflinching. Virgil Suarez describes the book as exhibiting a "sense of anguish and salvation." It is highly recommended.  Previously, her chapbook Blue Laws (Finishing Line , 2007) gave us lyrical poems rooted in family (some appearing again in the full-length book), alive in hope, unafraid to see and say the truths of being part of family, no matter how bitter or resplendent the memories are.  (updated 2/09)

Terry Blackhawk's newest release, The Dropped Hand (Marick, 2007), weaves grief and loss with growth and sustenance as she probes how humans exist, even thrive, with the knowledge of inevitable death. This masterful, wise, and compassionate collection of elegies confronts death head on and provides the meaning and affirmation we need to sustain us. This is a "must read" for any lover of poetry. Her second collection, Escape Artist (BkMk, 2003), was awarded the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry. Molly Peacock describes it as a "harvest of a book ... the poems are multi-leveled, passionate, varied, thoughtful, intense, and beautiful." There is also Body & Field (Michigan State University Press, 1999) whose clear-visioned, resolute poems, a fine blend of the dramatic, lyrical and narrative, delight and instruct us as the poet mixes sensuous language with intelligence and precision. There's a generous Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2004). And finally, there is Trio (Riverside Press,1998), a small chapbook of three myths, Eurydice, Medea, and Pasiphae, with beautiful linocuts by Agnoula M. Peters. (updated 06/07)

Moving The Still Life (Pudding House, 1993) is a 26 page chapbook of well-crafted poems about art by the fine poet Edward Boccia. More of his wonderful and quirky poetry follows in the full-length No Matter How Good The Light Is: Poems by a Painter (Time Being Books, 1998), poems fusing a painter's and poet's insights in unusual and unforgettable ways. Highly recommended.

Two somewhat older poetry chapbooks by William O. Boggs are Swimming in Clear Water (Dacotah Teritory Press, 1989) and Eddy Johnson's American Dream (Hiram Poetry, 1990). Whether dealing with the factory worker's life or the farm, country life and nature, the writing is strong and true.

Emma Bolden's delightful chapbook How To Recognize a Lady shares space in a four chapbook collection entitled Edge by Edge (Toadlily Press, 2007), These original poems and prose poems are wildly imaginative and fiercely ironic as they plumb the "endlessness of wanting."(David Rivard) with wry, often cutting, humor. The other poets included in this volume are Gladys Justin Carr, Heidi Hart, and Vivian Teter. 3/08.  

New Orleans and its immediate surroundings steam through Louis Bourgeois' stunning book Olga (CustomWords, 2005) so effectively that you can smell the squirrel stew bubbling on the stove, feel the humid air on your skin. Poems range from very short haiku-like pieces to intense prose poems to lyric narratives and include stunning homages to Trakl and Kierkegaard. Dark, iridescent and haunting describe this fine first book. (added 9/06)

Gaylord Brewer's Devilfish (Red Hen, 1999) won the 1998 Red Hen Press Poetry Award. These are shrewd poems, often grim, often edged with wit. The style is spare, lean and direct, the narratives have an edgy side that makes for good reading.

Dorian Brooks's A Pause in the Light (Holy Cow!Press, 1980) was published under the last name of Kottler, but these are vintage Dorian Brooks poems. It is women's poetry in the best sense of the word, healing and thematically diverse, with wonderful ending lines.

Andrea Carter Brown presents us with a remarkable debut book, The Disheveled Bed (CavanKerry, 2005). Molly Peacock describes it as: " naturally intelligent, unselfconscious, yet knowing and with a full chiaroscuro of hope and pain." as she tells of a couple's unfulfilled longing for a child. A previous chapbook, Brook & Rainbow (Sow's Ear, 2001), won the 2000 Sow's Ear Chapbook Competition. These poems of family, love and loss hook the reader at the first line and never let go. (updated 9/06)Sarah Browning is an activist well-known for founding "D.C. Poets Against the War" and for editing similarly-named collections of poetry, so it comes as no surprise that her first collection Whiskey in the Garden of Eden (Word Works, 2007) takes as its themes racism, war, urban poverty, and the dispossessed. And takes them very successfully, too. Lush and lyrical, courageously clear-eyed, these poems command attention by their sassy, smart language and loving spirit. Poems of childhood memory share pages with those of present social anxiety; love poems to her city jostle love poems to food. Eclectic & terrific! (Added 7/07).

 Sally Buckner gives us strong poems against the concept of war in Collateral Damage (Main Street Rag, 2007), a 42 page chapbook detailing wars of the Twentieth Century into the present, their effect on both fighters and civilians. She begins with a mirage of peace then shows us the highways we have traveled to carnage. The language is honed and precise, the execution flawless.  (new 9/07)

Michael Bugeja's Millennium's End (Archer, 1999)contains powerful, poignant and wise poems, his masterful use of formal, rhymed verse blending well with the free-verse narratives. And in Flight From Valhalla (Livingston University Press 1991), Bugeja gives us strong and honest poems of Germany, historical and present-day, making for fascinating reading

British poet Norman Buller brings us Travelling Light (Waterloo Press, 2005), a 42 page chapbook demonstrating his deft use of formal and structured verse. His subjects range from art through music, literature and philosophy to modern quirks, which he often treats with sardonic (what we usually call "British") humor. His is a precise, erudite poetry of studied grace. (updated 10/09 with web link)

The Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2001) of Richard Alan Bunch gives us a dozen of his best-loved poems, imbued with their Eastern meditative quality and philosophical foundations.

Beverly Burch is the author of Sweet to Burn, winner of the 2004 Gival Press book award. This story of a lesbian couple and their adopted daughter is novelistic in scope and applies to families of any gender as the poems chart the hills and valleys of emotional bonding between couples and their children. Poems are starkly realistic and emotional with crisp imagery.