Alan Berecka’s A Living Is Not a Life examines human life through a humorous lens and offers people a more positive, optimistic, and light-hearted outlook. Berecka also understands that even though we do not always achieve what we want in life, we need to possess the ability to laugh at ourselves.  It is significant to note that this humor is not just for the sake of humor but could be said to be a reflection of a fundamentally comedic view of human life, like that of Dante in the Divine Comedy, in which human life is understood in the context of the possibility of achieving prosperity eternally through salvation.
---Brandon Villari

Richard Cole’s “Home Depot” is a poem in the “Best Practices” section of Song of the Middle Manager that caught my eye from the very beginning. While reading, I found a sense of connection and resonated with this poem a lot. Cole’s ability to create a sense of nostalgia within me and later empower the reader to create something in this world is inspiring. In the first stanza, Cole mentions, “The smell of lumber . . . / . . . the finely sanded boards . . . / . . . bright hammers and precision drills,” and it took me back to the early mornings when my dad, who is a construction worker, would take me to Home Depot—“his second home,” I’d call it. As soon as you walk through those automatic double doors, the chill air of the store sends a shiver down your spine, but the aroma of freshly cut wood and sawdust wraps you in a warm embrace. The memories of this place, to me, were happy because it was a time spent with my father while also being taught the fundamentals of building something important. Here Cole too is writing about a place where you find the fundamentals you need to build something useful, and these “things are beautiful,” he reminds us. In his second stanza, Cole has stopped talking about Home Depot, and instead, is speaking on behalf of those who are the backbone of this country—those who are the buildings, those who provide shelter with their hard work, but are not acknowledged as anything more besides a worker. Cole also points out something that I think we all know, yet try not to think about which is that “we work so hard in this country, / as if we had nothing to lose . . .” We spend hours working, away from family, and even working on the Sabbath in order to survive, and we commonly forget to simply live. By working so hard, we lose a part of our freedom and life. Nowadays, we see more and more employees falling into this category of working more and living less. Cole briefly reminds us that we do in fact have a lot to lose by doing this.
---Jacquelyn Gualpa

One of my favorite poems in Anya Krugovoy Silver’s Saint Agnostica is “When.”  In this poem, the speaker throws into question the belief that everything happens for a reason by sarcastically presenting her response to her cancer in hypothetical terms.

When everything happens for a reason,
I’ll unpeel the seed pods in my throat.
Relieved, I’ll thread a pair of scissors
into my lungs and snip open the egg sacs
that have nestled in the pleural lining.

If having faith is believing that everything happens for a reason, that everything that happens to us is part of a larger divine plan, then here she is struggling between belief and doubt because of her choice to sarcastically express her acceptance of her illness in a completely unrealistic manner.  In this poem, she seems to believe that things happen just to happen, that they make no sense and cannot be attributed to divine will. How I take it is that she just speaks her mind, and I admire her ability to let her mind wander off into the places where she can express her experience openly and honestly.
---Zahnayaha Malone

The poems in Theresa Burns’ Design are remarkably authentic, depicting a steadfast love that is as individual as the lovers themselves and reminding us that every love is different. The strength of their love leaves the lovers unafraid to appreciate the world’s frequently ephemeral beauty, even amidst the unpleasant or the ordinary.  Burns writes about personal experiences that remind us of the individuality of every love and yet also remind us that we, too, have undergone similar circumstances that have altered our perceptions and bettered our character.  Burns’ ability to elaborate on these concepts demonstrates that she is also conscious of her feelings and does not try to control them.  She calls attention to these emotions to serve as a reminder to her audience that no one is flawless.
---Amanda Mestre

Paul Willis’ poems in Somewhere to Follow are

very realistic, very much of our own

experience, our daily activities and day-to-day

life, its struggles, its hardships, its fear and its

joy. From the Bible to the Quran, this book

prepares us to view the world from different

religious and trustworthy perspectives. In the

end, his poems make you stand on what you

believe love is, on what you believe faith is,

and on what you believe trust is, one with

yourself and one with divine power.

---Sujata Sah

The poems in Aaron Brown’s Call Me Exile are

musings on aloneness and on what was and

what might have been, from the dissolution of

a marriage to memories of childhood years

lived in Africa. Among these are poems about

other places and people, as well as poetry that

reveals the author’s questions about his own

faith. The poet seeks, through his reflections, a

path to the acceptance of the past, of change,

and of the randomness of life’s difficulties. The

poetic expressions in this book are all about

the journey.
---Laura Osborne