Reviewed by Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite

Odes on Ali: A Tribute to the Greatest is a collection of sports poetry written by David A. Bates. Bates introduces his work with an autobiographical account of his personal recollections of Ali's bouts as well as what he calls Ali's "pre-fight antics", and he shows why Ali should be considered, in many ways, the first of the rappers. He also discusses Ali's conversion to Islam and the efforts made by the draft board to induct him into the military despite his refusal to do so based upon his religious beliefs. After this introduction, Bates presents his collection of odes which cover every one of Ali's bouts in chronological order. Each poem is composed of four-line stanzas with the second and fourth lines having rhyming ends. The final poem sums up Ali's career and subsequent public service.

David A. Bates' collection of sports poetry, Odes on Ali: A Tribute to the Greatest, may be viewed with some initial skepticism by those readers who love sports writing, but I'm hoping they can suspend their disbelief just long enough to read Bates' brilliant introduction and one single poem. I’m convinced that one poem will render them as incapable of not continuing to read this most amazing recreation of Ali's career as if they had been rendered powerless by a tap from the legendary champ himself. These poems kept me spellbound as I followed Ali's progress from those initial bouts to winning and regaining his hard-earned title and through to his retirement. There's drama, action and suspense in every line as Bates' careful choices of words and rigorous adherence to the structure of his poems give each line power and real, you-are-there authenticity.

I had a marvelous time reading Odes on Ali and literally could not stop smiling the whole way through. While I was familiar with many of Ali’s major bouts, there was still so much to learn, so many bouts that I hadn't known about. These poems put the reader right there in the ring, watching the action as closely as if they were in front row seats. Yes, I was a bit skeptical when I saw the format of this work, but that introduction and first poem had me hooked, and I'm so glad they did. Odes on Ali: A Tribute to the Greatest is an original and most impressive book of sports writing and an outstanding collection of poetry all at once. It's most highly recommended.

Reviewed by Sarah Stuart for Readers' Favorite

All My Loves and Deaths is a collection of sixty poems by Adele Seronde. They have been written as a long and eventful life travels towards its end, and the content reflects this: family, friends and loves lost, experiences that age decrees can never be repeated, and memories of special times, happy and sad. These poems are very different, but people and events which touched and captivated Mrs Seronde are crystal clear. All My Loves and Deaths is a more descriptive title than anyone yet to read this book could ever guess.

Adele Seronde offers freestyle poetry at its very best in All My Loves and Deaths. I wondered when I read the first, Lifelong Friends, what more there was to say because it encompasses so much.

This is a verse from My Children: “You are my dearest stepping stones to living foundation blocks of blood and untold strength of considerate thought or caution, blind leaps to action, torrential anger, laughter, outstretched hands, quiet humor, tears and fire.”

If Only. Who hasn’t thought, if only? The writer was unaware the last sense to fade is hearing, until it was too late. “I would have gone those thousand miles to sit beside her with my heart inside her hand.”

Requiem for Thistle, eleven verses long, tells a complete story. The vocabulary used is wide, but always clear, and used incredibly effectively, especially in Charlotte, whilst Memory says so much in six short lines.

This is a story told as life nears its end and yet reading it brings joy, and that is a tremendous achievement. All My Loves and Deaths is a book to treasure forever.

Reviewed by J. Aislynn d'Merricksson for Readers' Favorite

Louis Alan Swartz' collection Constructed of Magic and Other Poems on the Immortality of the Human Spirit is poetry after my own heart. I fell in love with it from the very first. There are many deep, philosophical poems that will set you to thinking. There are light-hearted poems, and poems to soothe the soul. Most of the poems in this collection deal with knowing and appreciating the Divine Spark within. Illusion is another theme that runs through the book.

I write poetry, and I tend towards the spiritual, philosophical, and the cynical, so I clicked with these poems right away. There is a beauty to Swartz' poems that can be appreciated, even if one does not share the same world view as the poet. Many of the more philosophical poems in this collection put me in mind of the great poet Rumi.

Lasting Prosperity and Maze of Depression hit home really hard. I had to stop reading and spend some time thinking. Lasting Prosperity was very difficult for me to get through at first. My favourite poems, though, were The Path and Dark Truths. They made me pause and think as well, but in a better way.

If you like the spiritual, and like to ponder deeper questions, pick up a copy of Swartz' Constructed of Magic. Take the time to savour each poem for the divine offering it is. Take a poem a day and marinate with it. Journal your thoughts. You are sure to grow in the process and expand your way of thinking. If you shatter some of your own illusions, so much the better.

Reviewed by Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite

Life in Suspension: La Vie Suspendue (English and French Edition) is a collection of poetry written by Helene Cardona. The poet is also a translator, editor of an anthology of Poetry and Aesthetics, and an essayist. The poetry in this collection was originally written in English and then translated by the poet into French. Her collection is separated thematically into four sections which seem to bear a correlation with life cycles. Each section is prefaced with quotes that act as guideposts for the reader as he/she travels therein. Many of Cardona's works revolve around her family, most particularly her mother whose essence seems omnipresent for her daughter as expressed in her opening poem, To Kitty, Who Loved the Sea and Somerset Maugham: “Whose laughter burns snow/Whose warm breath I breathed/This morning as I woke/The scent of gardenias whispering/I never left you.” There are also memories shared of a Greek grandfather whose glib pronouncement "...a boy at last, I'm not impressed with girls" seems embedded in her consciousness. But in that family is also the world embraced in miniature: the streets of Paris, ballet classes as a child in Geneva, a grandmother in Tarragona who teaches her Spanish, horse-back riding in Wales.

Helene Cardona's bilingual collection of poetry, Life in Suspension: La Vie Suspendue, reels with energy and images that pour out into the reader's consciousness. Cardona gleefully plays with words and makes them do her bidding, joyfully violating their essence and somehow making the violation a thing of nature and beauty. I was intrigued by the bilingual nature of this work and enjoyed reading both the French and English versions, sounding out the words as I read and savoring the way the sounds and meanings meshed and played. Life in Suspension is a frank and fearless work that reveals, at times, so much of the author's essence that I felt a need to step back and allow her space, a bit of privacy. But then her next few lines would seem to acknowledge the closeness and defy any traditional need for space. This is a collection of poetry to be savored slowly and enjoyed again and again. Life in Suspension is most highly recommended.

Reviewed by Lit Amri for Readers' Favorite

Augustine Sam's Flashes of Emotion: A Collections of Poems is romantic poetry that looks into a vast array of subjects: love, pain, death and other life matters that evoke our sentiments. Having read his previous work, Take Back the Memory, a contemporary women’s fiction, I was curious to get to know him as a poet. I wasn't disappointed. His poems are written in a vivid and refreshing style. This makes the collection easy to relate to even by the casual readers of poetry like me. Sam's compilation is pleasurable to read and to reread.

The book opens with the thought-provoking poems under the segment Lips and Wits. My favorite, however, is A Solitary Observer under the segment Musings.

I stand in pensive solitude and watch
As life, in its omnipotence, swirls around me
Sucking me into a kaleidoscope of its timeless grace
Dazzling me with contrasting colors

Sam knows how to put across emotions and thoughts, and they resonate from every poem. Personally, the collection as a whole seems to be mostly tinged with a certain somberness or, if I may say, a metaphoric darkness for me. Other readers, however, might have different interpretations.

In Sam’s own words, this book is definitely “a little anthem to celebrate the human spirit.” For poetry lovers, Flashes of Emotion is certainly a collection of poems that they want to sink their teeth into. The depth of sentiment and reflection explored in each poem is more than enough for anyone to contemplate in a long time.

Reviewed by Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite

City Times and Other Poems is a collection of poetry written by Vihang A. Naik. Naik is a poet, professor and translator of poetry. This collection contains six major poem-themes with the exception of his visual, standalone poem, Self Portrait. The poems are free verse in form, with the sections of each chapter or poem-theme merging into and flowing from each other. Naik's style is terse yet rich in expression, form, shape and sound.

Vihang A. Naik's poetry collection, City Times and Other Poems, is stark and evocative. Each poem begs to be read aloud, slowly, to be savored for its mingled sounds, images and meaning. Some of the poems are quite moody and introspective, while others sparkle with intensity. At the Shore and City Times were the poems that resonated most strongly with me. You can hear the surf, see the waves and watch the fleeting images etched in sand in At the Shore. The subtitles of this poem are Distance, Illusion, Desire, Pleasure, Voice, Eyes, concluding in At the Shore, and each presents a different, yet connected aspect of the theme.

City Times is a heady mix of beauty, life and a visual array of the abstract sculptures and buildings that form the skeleton of the city. The section On Visiting Grandfather's house is nostalgic and moody: "Grandfather's father/ was a saint/ now/ a photograph/ lies untouched in an attic." Time seemed to stand still for me as I read Naik's verse. Each word is used with precision; each image is clearly brought forth with remarkable power and efficiency; each mood is brought to life, examined and then transformed into its successor. Reading City Times and Other Poems is a heady and illuminating experience. It's most highly recommended.

Reviewed by Katelyn Hensel for Readers' Favorite

I Ate The Cosmos for Breakfast is a beauty from cover to final page. Melissa Studdard has such a passion for life. She quite literally breathes a world of color into the sometimes drab world of poetry and seems to have such vigor that I would most likely be intimidated should I meet her in person!

Just sit and take a moment to picture what the name suggests. I ate the cosmos. What does that mean? The odd descriptions and zany imagery gave this set of poetry a bit of shine to its rhyme and a bit of sass to its syntax. There are so many questions present in the text and, while the author gives her own answers and her own interpretations, there is also room for the reader to explore and think for themselves to find a meaning in each poem.

What I liked most was that each poem had a very visual quality to it. No description was left out, no tiny detail seemed to have been forgotten. Each poem easily formed a picture with words that stuck with you after you finished reading. I loved the formatting that Melissa Studdard chose for this piece. I get that poetry is supposed to be free form, and in the eye of each beholder...however, that does not allow the freedom to have messy format or odd spacing. Thank you, Melissa, for writing awesome poetry that also looks attractive and well written on the page. That's a hard thing to do, it seems, in the genre.

Reviewed by John Witcher for Readers' Favorite

Holes in Space by Andrea Barbosa is a soft and colorful flower. The poetry in this book blooms with life and love. The book begins with a shower of emotion. "Poeme" is filled with warm metaphors that entice all of the senses. I found my emotions pouring through me as I read "Devotion." I could feel the heartbeat and the troubling love that has grown in the soul and the devotion that will not be denied. I found the fragile dreams of "Life Dream" to be so true. How years fly by and dreams grow and then vanish. And the one thing that no one can escape ... death. All these things, as humans, we fear. They create and shape our lives. The moments that we can never forget become the moments that live in our hearts and the hearts of those we inspire.

Holes in Space is an incredible poetic work. It is not often that every poem in a collection of work will make you feel such strong emotion. The word choices paint such beautiful pictures. I can feel the love, the pain, and the raw emotion that went into every word. It is even more rare for poetry to create such intoxication of raw emotions. If you love or hurt, you need to experience this book first hand. I was very touched by this work, but my words cannot do justice to the emotion that it brings forth. I highly recommend that you experience this book first hand.

Reviewed by Rich Follett for Readers' Favorite

In Greek mythology, Antigone is the quintessential tortured woman of strength - born of incest, condemned to die for the act of burying her dead brother’s body against the wishes of her uncle King Creon, and doomed to be remembered solely in terms of the curse that defined her life. Marie Slaight’s The Antigone Poems offers a dark, probing examination of the shadows of their namesake’s curse -- shadows which loom over women even today. Images of isolation, helplessness, death, blood, daemons, and a host of other archetypal afflictions pervade this stark, masterful collection. None of the poems bears a title but the lines are as distinct as if each were a fingerprint left in blood at the scene of an unspeakable crime: “We live our lives/the instant between life and death.”

Mask-like, immutable illustrations by the late Terrence Tasker (1947 - 1992), to whose memory this collection is dedicated, stare accusingly from random pages, bearing anguished witness to the psychic wounding encompassed by the verses and providing a perfect contrapuntal tension as Slaight’s tragic testimonial unfolds. The overall effect is riveting in the same way that one cannot look away from a car crash - death is omnipresent but the infinite number of possible manifestations defies augury. In the end, we can only watch in abject terror and wait for the toll to reveal itself.

As with all works of tragedy, catharsis is key; we keep reading because we do not want to accept that the situation is hopeless and because the absolute nature of the chaos before us makes our own human condition seem comparatively well-ordered and temporarily manageable. Slaight herself proclaims, in a parting gesture: “I wanted everything. To live all lives, all deaths, encompass all women. To smash every confine.” Antigone would have been proud.

Reviewed by Gail Wickman for Readers' Favorite

Edward Eaton gives readers a new take on an old story in Hector and Achilles, a verse drama of the great battle of heroes in the Trojan war. The dramatic dialogue is written in a series of the standard 5-7-5 haiku, lending power and beauty to the language of the play. Written in two acts and divided by Hector’s death, the play is framed by Hector’s monologues at the beginning and Achilles’s monologues at the end.

As with any rewriting of a classic story, this one reflects the feelings of the writer’s times, and there is a great deal of musing about life, death, the nature of the gods, and the reasons behind war. The Trojans are cast as the good guys, and the Greeks as hairy, war-mongering buffoons, until Achilles’s speech casts even that certainty into doubt. The poetic language emphasizes the pathos of scenes between Hector and his father, wife, and son. The Greek heroes Odysseus and Ajax become the source of comic relief. For those who know the story, there are lines that these characters utter foreshadowing events they know nothing about, but at which the audience can smile and nod knowingly.

Eaton’s Hector and Achilles leaves the reader, and I am sure the theater audience, with much to think about regarding war, grief, and courage. Additionally, the verse style of the dialogue makes the play much more enjoyable to read than the average script. The beauty of the language and the power of the story overcome the lack of visible action, though I suspect a theatrical production of the work would be well worth seeing. I recommend Hector and Achilles. It is a rewarding read.