Jaimee Hills

Old War By Alan Shapiro Houghton Mifflin, 96 pp. In Alan Shapiro’s latest book, Old War, we find many poems where he masterfully describes what seems to be absolutely nothing. The poem “Before” begins “you entered the room, there was just the room,/ and all the soundless damage of the air,/ its rain of invisibilities,” […]

Family Bible By Melissa Delbridge University of Iowa Press, 168 pp. For local archivist and author Melissa Delbridge, growing up in Tuscaloosa, Ala., is not a story of Southern belles and gentility, but one of skin-scraped knees and avoiding getting kidnapped by hobos. Her recent memoir, Family Bible, is a Southern story of sex, drugs […]

Irresponsibility by Chris Vitiello Ahsahta Press, 112 pp. What does it mean to say, as local poet Chris Vitiello does in his new collection, Irresponsibility, that “A Cornell box is one thing”? How do we collapse the artwork of Joseph Cornelloften depicting a collection of unconnected objects like a ball, a bird, a cork and […]

Birdhouses By Rob McDonald Horse & Buggy Press, Limited Edition Photographer Rob McDonald has been stalking the birdhouses of South Carolina and Virginia. His new book, Birdhouses, produced by Durham’s Horse & Buggy Press, celebrates bookmaking as an art form. At $125, this gallery of birdhouse images has the price tag of an art piece, […]

Rock On: An Office Power Ballad By Dan Kennedy Algonquin Books, 224 pp. An antidote for anyone who’s got recession blues is Dan Kennedy’s Rock On: An Office Power Ballad, the story of a “glorified foot soldier” who navigates the peccadillo-laden multimillion-dollar music industry. As his firm survives a somewhat hostile takeover, where even seven-figure […]

Song of the Line by Jack Gilbert and Henryk Fantazos Horse & Buggy Press, 112 pp. The friendship between Van Gogh and Gaugin didn’t end well: Van Gogh nearly stabbed Gaugin, and afterward cut off his own ear in horror at his actions. Luckily, the friendship between poet Jack Gilbert and artist Henryk Fantazos, both […]

Complex Sleep By Tony Tost University of Iowa Press, 122 pp. In her introduction to this year’s Best American Poetry, Heather McHugh describes the love of language that drew her to poetry: “The oddity and opportunity of verbal life seemed not just a poem’s object but its subject.” Oddity and opportunity are very much alive […]

The Enemy By Rafael Campo Duke University Press, 99 pp. Rafael Campo, master of iambic meter, doctor and former Durhamite, has long been a keen observer of human emotion. In his latest collection, The Enemy, he slices into topics like gay marriage and the rush to the Iraq war, proving there are not just conservative […]