NewPages Blog

Guest Post by Susan Kay Anderson

I’m attracted at once to the cover of Excisions by Hilary Plum. It is one of those famous tapestries from Medieval times, “The Unicorn Surrenders to a Maiden,” which is part of The Unicorn Tapestry series. That theme is theorized to represent Christ (with the unicorn being hunted) and the Crucifixion/Courtly Love. The titular long poem and section weaves in and out of the world of the Unicorn Tapestry and comes face-to-face with real-life situations and circumstances that Plum shows readers. The poet seems like the maiden, then like the wounded and dying unicorn, and then like the hound who has attacked the unicorn. Each line of Plum’s poems is precise and layers itself against the next line so that each creates a huge, whole image. These are such a mix of old and new, as in these lines from “If a gun disappears it reappears”:

…like
heaving stones no archeologist
schooled in empire
declines…

The images Plum creates are intriguing and captivating. I don’t know what to do with so many of them but to go back again and again to meditate and dream.

Excisions by Hilary Plum. Black Lawrence Press, October 2022.

Reviewer bio: Susan Kay Anderson lives in southwestern Oregon’s Umpqua River Basin. Her long poem “Man’s West Once” was selected for Barrow Street Journal’s “4 X 2 Project” and is included in Mezzanine (2019). Anderson also published Virginia Brautigan Aste’s memoir, Please Plant This Book Coast To Coast (2021).

Guest Post by Ashley Holloway

Originally published in 2017, Jen Knox’s revised edition of The Glass City is a brilliant collection of seventeen stories that fluidly combine seemingly unrelated themes together in unexpected ways. In this futuristic-yet-timely collection, Knox highlights society’s overwhelming sense of entitlement and narcissistic tendencies and their relationship to our changing climate. Each story is a mirror thrust in our faces, urging us to get over our love affair with ourselves, reminding us that “people didn’t need to further distinguish themselves from nature.” With buildings collapsing from exhaustion, virtual races run at home on treadmills, terrorist attacks, never-ending snowstorms, and characters with extra layers of toes from food contamination, Mother Nature acts as an omnipotent protagonist throughout, serving her primitive justice as a warning to society for the perils of continuing along the same trajectory. However, like the art of Kintsugi, Knox leaves us with the thought that what was once broken can indeed be salvaged and transformed into something beautiful.

The Glass City & Other Stories by Jen Knox. Press Americana, September 2023 (re-release).

Reviewer bio: Ashley Holloway teaches healthcare leadership at Bow Valley College in Calgary, AB. She writes in a variety of genres with work appearing across Canada and the US and has co-authored three books. Ashley is an editor for Unleash Press and her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.