Author: Heavy Feather

Review: Kate Kimball on Drawing Water by Eva Heisler

Perhaps one of the most difficult processes to demonstrate, investigate, interrogate, mimic, and exemplify in poetry is that of the creation of a poem itself, and yet, in Drawing Water, that is precisely what writer Eva Heisler sets out to do. But, this isn’t the typical meta-writing that many readers may be familiar with and…
The Ides of March: An Anthology of Ohio Poets, edited by Hannah Stephenson, reviewed by Ezekiel Black

The editors of Heavy Feather Review chose me to review The Ides of March because of my inexperience with Ohio. They wanted an outside perspective, and this they shall receive. That is, my only exposure to Ohioan culture was a wedding I recently attended. Although the wedding was in Kentucky, the bride and her family…
I Am Trying to Break Your Sex Laws 3.1

“Why am I single?” —Meghan F., Kissimmee, FL Silkworm Today, her palm print blisters everywhere she touched. I try and steal back every breath she took, but my lungs act like the Wet Bandits. I fold everything into arks as the room fills. I fold the arks into nuclear reactors, breach every core. This will keep…
“A Miraculous Construct of Worlds”: In the Kettle, the Shriek, poetry by Hannah Stephenson, reviewed by Paul David Adkins

There is something miraculous and mysterious inhabiting Hannah Stephenson’s debut poetry volume In the Kettle, the Shriek. Through Stephenson’s meticulous style, there’s a world being constructed within its pages, a world of couplets and tercets and blocks. She uses the precision and exactitude of a watchmaker to populate this landscape with beautiful details. Then, just…
“Think of Your Kid”: Microtones, poetry by Robert Vaughan, reviewed by Jeremy Hauck

In a recent essay in Boston Review titled “Against Conceptualism: Defending the Poetry of Affect,” Calvin Bedient writes that “Vehemence of feeling nonplusses the modern personality, a hostage to ambiguity and irony.” He says, “More and more poets are suspicious of lyrical expression and devote themselves to emotionally neutral methods.” While Robert Vaughan’s Microtones can…
No Object, poetry by Natalie Shapero, reviewed by Nathan Moore

“It is unbefitting to believe in ghosts, to believe what one reads,what one writes.” —“Arranged Hours,” Natalie Shapero I have been in possession of Natalie Shapero’s No Object for a long time—about seven weeks. I should have turned in this review a while ago. The thing is, it caught me. Have you ever found…
The Isle of Youth, short stories by Laura van den Berg, reviewed by Erin McKnight

“It was a terrible flaw, our inability to see where our lives were leading us,” reflects one of Laura van den Berg’s characters before everything is terribly and irrevocably brought to bear. Indeed for the young women of this highly anticipated sophomore story collection who are living on the fringe, where mystery and intrigue are…
The Disordered, poetry by Anhvu Buchanan, reviewed by David Peak

The publication of a revised edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is always a curious event. When I was in college forever ago, we studied the fourth edition. The fact that there is now a fifth edition was brought to my attention some months ago by my friend.…
Soul in Space, new poems by Noelle Kocot, reviewed by Jordan Sanderson

Soul in Space, Noelle Kocot’s sixth full-length collection of poetry, calls us to the world and the world to us. At the end of the acknowledgements, Kocot thanks “the late Randall Jarrell—it is his gorgeous poem “Seele im Raum” that inspired the title for this book: as translated, Seele im Raum means Soul in Space.”…