Orfeito is a sweeping bilingual poetry collection inspired by the enduring Orpheus tradition—from classical mythology to its Black Atlantic reinterpretations. Through interconnected poems, Ricardo Nazario y Colón follows a Puerto Rican boy whose journey carries him from the island to New York and beyond, where family history, migration, Afro-Caribbean spirituality, first love, grief, memory, and cultural inheritance converge into an intimate coming-of-age epic. Moving effortlessly between English and Spanish, the collection is rich with music, myth, and spellbinding storytelling, revealing how identity is not inherited whole but forged across borders, languages, and generations.
Category Archives: review
A Middle-Aged Woman Rages Reviewed by Michael Escoubas
“Nothing could have prepared me to write a review of A Middle Aged Woman Rages, by Melissa Jørgenrud Helton. Having written well over three hundred book reviews, I have never encountered a collection this outrageous, this angry, this mission focused. Yet, in the same breath, I have yet to engage with a work so compelling, so honest, and so “needed” by western culture. Helton is fresh, bold, and raw. These observations are not in the least pejorative. But they are true.”
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas for “Quill & Parchment.”
Read the rest of the review at https://quillandparchment.com/archives/Oct2026/book.html
A New Review of A Middle-Aged Woman Rages
“A Middle-Aged Woman Rages will help readers to ponder rage as it shares memorable poems from one author’s persona in a uniquely qualified voice.” — Felicia Mitchell, Appalachian Journal
Read the entire review here.
Poet Manny Grimaldi reads B Elizabeth Beck’s PAINTED DAYDREAMS (Accents Publishing, 2019).
Poet Manny Grimaldi Reads Poet Kathleen Gregg
Accents Publishing is proud to present Soliloquy to the Night Sky, Kathleen Gregg’s first full-length volume of poetry. The brave poems in this book tell the deeply moving and sometimes heartbreaking story of a family’s struggle with Alzheimer’s.
Accents on Books: Dear Youngstown: A Love Letter Home
Dear Youngstown: A Love Letter Home
The poems in Karen Schubert’s Dear Youngstown are deeply rooted in a sense of place, and brimming with animated detail: they might be stamped on the city’s concrete sidewalks, leading the reader on a guided tour of its neighborhoods and landmarks.
Through the poet’s plain-spoken narratives, we enter the atmosphere of the Old Ward Bakery with its “filmy windows stuck shut;” every sense responds to “rat-tail beets, blueberries, basil, muffins and tie-dye” mingled with “jazz, sultry” and banter at “Farmer’s Market.”
The poet’s affection and concern for her adopted hometown resonate throughout. We raise a glass at Cedars in “Closing the Bar,” pass an abandoned house with “swayback porch roof/gutters choke and hatch saplings,” in a row of homes slated for razing in “kitty corner from the empty high school.”
Dear Youngstown is a wonderfully crafted love letter to the beautiful grit of a city on its knees, but rising.
DEAR YOUNGSTOWN
41 pps
retail price $15.00
ISBN #978-1-64092-999-9
Night Ballet Press, February, 2019
Barbara Sabol
Barbara Sabol is the author of the poetry collection, Solitary Spin, and two chapbooks, Original Ruse and The distance Between Blues. Barbara’s awards include an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council and the Mary Jean Irion Poetry Prize. She reviews poetry books for the blog, Poetry Matters.