Erica Goss
Landscape with Womb and Paradox Broadstone Books, 2026
$23.50
Playlist:
Landscape with Womb and Paradox travels from the freeways of California to deep regions of the heart, exploring issues between parents and children, our relationship with nature, and the restlessness at the core of so many of us. The book examines the various heredities we all claim, from those going back generations to the ones we pass on to our children. Narrative and lyrical, these poems were inspired by visits to Europe, research into my family’s history, and long hours spent tending my gardens, both real and imaginary.
Poems read:
“Landscape with Womb and Paradox”
“Köln Notebook”
“The State of Jefferson”
“Portal”
Preeti Vangani
Fifty Mothers
River River Books, 2026,
$20
Playlist:
Preeti Vangani’s Fifty Mothers weaves narrative and elegy around the figure of a mother, the poems unfolding in the speaker’s Bombay home. Pierced with joy, with music and sweat, traffic and smoke, the collection layers family dynamics, gender roles, and the pain and pleasure of the speaker’s body, while drawing a living, lyric line between the “gone mother” and daughter. In the keen, interwoven contexts of grief, physical pain, and lyric poetry, Vangani’s Fifty Mothers considers the variety of the phenomenal world and discovers in its living wake an abundance of taste, touch, and mothers.
Donna Vorreyer
Unrivered
Sundress Publications, 2025
$17.95
Playlist:
This video is a reading of the last five sonnets (10-15) in a heroic crown that is the anchor for Unrivered as a collection. It explores some of the same themes and images that are found throughout the collection. I don't often have the opportunity to read the entire 15 sonnet cycle, and I hope this introduction to the form, which is both propulsive and recursive like a life, will serve as a good introduction to the book.