Review of "The Farmer's Wake" by Anne Maren-Hogan

Review written by local poet Kathy Weisfeld

 

 

Anne Maren-Hogan in

The Farmer's Wake, gives us poems as rich in language as the Iowa soil she describes so vividly. Telling stories of generations of women,

we learn about more than farm life and the people who raised her. Her landscapes and portraits are of the emotions and connections felt as she writes of farm seasons and life seasons

stitching it all together with this certainty/of leaving and returning.

Review of "Terroir" by Robert Morgan

Review written by Anne Maren-Hogan




Robert Morgan's newest book of poems "Terroir" lives up to it's name, loosely translated as "a sense of place," which is embodied in certain characteristic qualities, the sum of the effects that the local environment has had on the production of the product. He takes us on a long hike in these southern Appalachians in his poems drawing on science and folklore, Native American history and music. Walking with him through this book leaves one only wanting to go out again to find a path from your place and now with eyes open walk with wonder in the local and familiar, the sacred in the everyday.