The works in Billy Collins’ latest collection Musical Tables: Poems are referred to as “small poems” by the author in the introduction. What they really are, though, is an assortment of puns, obvious observations, and downright pointless musings stretched far too thin. The goal of the book may be to illustrate the poet’s craft even […]

In times of cold and turmoil, it’s easy to forget that the most important thing for some people is warmth. As winter descends, being warm means many things, and it takes on many guises. This small but powerful work attempts to capture the feeling of being warm and what it means to those facing a […]

In what many call “Education for Extinction,” 523 church-run boarding schools took Native American children from their families and attempted to indoctrinate them away from their culture. About 35,000 children were schooled in this way. This poetic narrative details one such child who was raised by a Baptist family away from her Cheyenne family. The […]