REVIEWS

“The Pretender” is a vivid journey through landscape and memory; it transports and challenges us in ways that poems seldom do. We rarely see poetry tackle this kind of intimacy, and we rarely see it done with such grace and svelte concision. Intensely personal, yet wildly accessible, “The Pretender” reveals the uncomfortable truths of who we are when nobody is looking—and when everybody is looking. Like all great art, this poem is a gift that keeps giving; we discover more about it, and ourselves, with every reading. Sometimes gently, and sometimes without apologies, “The Pretender” simultaneously creates a compassionate and a painfully complicated view of our own humanity. We love that. Needless to say, we are excited to share it with the world.

(About the poem “The Pretender” published in Sky Island Journal, Issue 11, Winter 2020)