SRPR Review Essay Feature

Each issue of Spoon River Poetry Review print jounral concludes with “The SRPR Review Essay,” which editors identify as “a long analytical essay (20-25 pp) that blurs the line between the short, opinion-driven review and the academic article. Each review essay is written by an established poet-critic who situates 3-5 new books of contemporary poetry within relevant conversations concerning poetry and poetics. At least half of the books discussed in the review essay are published by small presses.” The most recent issue (41.1) features “The New in the News: Poetry, Authenticity, and the Historical Imagination” by Bruce Bond, and includes critical reviews of The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out: Poems by Karen Solie (Farrar, Straus, and Girous, 2015) and Emblems of the Passing World: Poems after Photographs by August Sander by Adam Kirsch (The Other Press, 2015). A list of recent SRPR review essays can be found here, with some excerpted as well as full text.