David Clewell, Almost Nothing to Be Scared Of (University of Wisconsin Press, April 2016): In his latest, Clewell quotes the Amazing Criswell from Plan 9 From Outer Space: “You are interested in the unknown, the mysterious, the unexplainable. That is why you are here.” And yes, these poems find Clewell ruminating on cryptids, flying saucers, the JFK assassination, and tinfoil hats. His most profound magic, though, happens in poems about day-to-day life, when he writes about his New Jersey childhood, about fatherhood and marriage, or lecturing at the convention of state librarians. No one is more of a perfectionist than Clewell; His lines crack wise and breath easy, but break out your mechanical pencil and map the scansion, and it’s clear they’ve gone through draft after draft. As with any master, his hand is invisible unless you look hard. And that, friends, is why we are here.
Matthew Freeman, Everything I Love Restored: And Other Poems (Coffeetown Press, January 2016): Musician and poet Matt Freeman was once the Dogtown poet; now he’s in U. City, but St. Louis is as vivid as ever in his work. In his strongest collection yet, Freeman writes about South Grand, Poplar Bluff, Route 3, and the crows that haunt the bushes behind the Carondelet Care Facility. He writes about the pretty girl in the purple beret at the coffee shop, his fellow bus riders, a homeless man who hides a mattress in Kennedy Forest in Forest Park. But as UMSL creative writing professor and poet Eamon Wall notes, “his poems, because they can simultaneously embrace and transcend the local, have a wide appeal.”
