Sailing by Ravens Holly J. Hughes University of Alaska Press, 2014 Holly J. Hughes’ recent collection of poetry, Sailing by Ravens, is an immersion into nautical language and life, and an exploration of what it means to live with direction and drift, two opposing energies that tug our human lives. Sailing by Ravens is arranged in sections like compass points: north, west, south & east—each section accruing depth about navigating the ocean, experiencing the loss of love, and an exploration of human losses. The collection acts like a plumb line measuring the depth of the charts and maps that Hughes learned to love so young in her life—a plumb line of the self, that “faint tick tick of the heart.” The collection’s first section, “North,” draws subtle connections between map makers and self makers. “X saying here,” Hughes writes, offering a destination to be measured in degrees yet “wrenched from time.” The tension in this section quietly builds in the differentiation between actual and magnetic direction, in how the slightest metal objects on a boat can effect the path that will be …

Some Planet John Mortara YesYes Books, 2015 In issues of taxonomy Stephen J. Gould states, in his essay “Bully for the Brontosaurus,” “the dispute is only about names, not about things.” Only, in this context, is a word that rankles some, especially poets for whom the language of a thing is of importance. John Mortara makes a subtle case against the proper nouning of the natural world in Some Planet, a book whose title can be read ironically with an eye roll, as in some planet you got there. Or with the enthusiasm of a kid in the 50’s, gee whiz that’s some planet. The Emersonian epigraph, which reads in part, “Know then, that the world exists for you: build, therefore, your own world,” implies another reading: any planet is a personal planet—the natural world is a thing to be built on your own.