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The Gates of War; Rose Petals; Secondhand Prose | The Hudson Review

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 1d

Lorna Knowles Blake reviews Regaining Unconsciousness by Harryette Mullen @graywolfpress.bsky.social:

1/2
Mullen’s work is characterized by a mix of social commentary and serious wordplay. Her love of the lexicon, of paradox, of nonsense recalls Emily Dickinson, Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear....

1 1 2

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 2d

2/2
and waiting for the echo, as Don Marquis,
author of Archy and Mehitabel
and sixteen forgotten other books
famously said. Or not so famously.

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 2d

From “Rose Petals” by Rachel Hadas :

1/2
Publishing a poem or a book of poems
and releasing it expectantly into the world
is like dropping a rose petal
into the Grand Canyon

Celebrating Originality in Broadway’s Musical Lineup | The Hudson Review

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 3d

3/3
Image: (Left to right): Nicholas Barasch (Frederic), Ramin Karimloo (Pirate King), David Hyde Pierce (Gilbert/Major General Stanley) and the company of Roundabout Theatre Company’s Broadway production of Pirates! The Penzance Musical. Credit: Joan Marcus, 2025.

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 3d

2/3
Much goodwill was lost, though, when the adapters shoehorned a well-principled but heavy-handed, derivative ode to diversity and inclusion in the show’s final minutes. Gilbert, who valued a light touch, would not have approved.

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 3d

Erick Neher reviews Pirates! The Penzance Musical revival:

1/3
In general, the show was best when it found fresh ways to celebrate the genius of the original but foundered when it fell back on cliché and camp.…The production half worked, coasting on general high spirits.

War and Peace | The Hudson Review

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 4d

3/3
For “men were fulfilling an elementary zoological law
which the bees fulfill by exterminating each other in
the fall. . . . No other answer can be given.” Shall this
Become the prism through which I’ll now read,

Seeing a fractured hive’s self-consuming bees?

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 4d

2/3
Suddenly skimming, and find “Why did millions
of men set about killing each other, as it has been
known ever since the world began that it is both
physically and morally bad?” A rhetorical question,

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 4d

From part 7 of the poem “War and Peace” by Brian Culhane:

1/3
I recall Tolstoy had trouble concluding his novel,
And yes, past page 1128, there follow Epilogues,
And afterwards, an Appendix, “A Few Words
Apropos of the Book War and Peace,” where I land,

His Glasses | The Hudson Review

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 9d

When needed most, his glasses—
have they failed?

I try them on.
The scratches on the cabinets are gone,

the rooms are bright,
the windows clean,

and my reflection in the glass
is beautiful.

—From “His Glasses” by Joyce Schmid

The Sorrowful Fates of Lyric Poets | The Hudson Review

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 10d

4/4
Professor Most’s point that...Childers’ selection tends “very strongly not only to be spoken by an explicit first person ‘I’ or ‘we’ but also to take as [its] subject matter the experiences and views of that speaker” feels like the essential defense of the book’s expansive borders.

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 10d

3/4
Yet genre is nothing if not flexible, and the inclusion of a number of poets not normally thought of as lyric does no real harm, though it does make a big book bigger…

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 10d

2/4
since while classicists are trained in both, they usually specialize in one or the other. This is a welcome decision, as it gives us an anthology that covers most of the ancient world. If anything, Childers is too inclusive…

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 10d

Bruce Whiteman reviews The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse, tr. & ed. Christopher Childers @penguinclassicsusa.bsky.social:

1/4
This inclusion [of both Greek and Latin poets] renders his book extraordinarily ambitious. Most translators would stick to just one of the ancient languages,

Changing Times Chronicle; Braking News | The Hudson Review

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 11d

The rain stopped. The sun almost came out, but stopped.
The war halted; truce/truce! People stopped hating each other.
Then someone stopped believing in the truce
and it stopped being one.

—From “Braking News” by J. Allyn Rosser

What Draws Us Together | The Hudson Review

2

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 12d

2/2
The field is a kitchen table, the skirmishes mundane (how to load a dishwasher, share closet space, organize a spice rack); arguments once shelved bubble up in irritation, or detonate in rage...Tentatively, they try to live in a “shared country” as they “trade one distance for another.”

Ode to the Indies | The Hudson Review

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 12d

Lorna Knowles Blake reviews Civilians by Jehanne Dubrow @lsupress.bsky.social:

1/2
A candid look at what happens to a marriage in the aftermath of active military service…Now the battles are not an ocean or a continent away, the strikes are not by faceless drone or the impersonal machinery of war.

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The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 17d

3/3
A very different story is “Old Poets”.…I empathized with [the main character], I was indeed invested, and often I laughed aloud. Though I would have liked more stories like “Old Poets” in the collection, I was mightily impressed by Origin Stories. Vallianatos knows what she’s doing.

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 17d

2/3
In trying to put my finger on what I thought the stories lacked, I revisited a few. They are in fact very good stories, interesting and unique, but my problem with some, though not all, is they kept me at arm’s length.…I was engaged but not invested.

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 17d

Louise Marburg reviews Origin Stories by Corinna Vallianatos @graywolfpress.bsky.social:

1/3
There is no question that Vallianatos is a superbly talented writer…but there’s a difference between being an excellent writer and being a good storyteller, and I didn’t initially think she was the latter.

Celebrating Originality in Broadway’s Musical Lineup | The Hudson Review

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 18d

Image: Robyn Hurder (Ivy Lynn) and the cast of SMASH. Credit: Matthew Murphy, 2025.

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 18d

The new show is so much better than its television source material that it almost feels like a big success, which it isn’t....For the most part the show passes by pleasantly enough. But it’s never electrifying, never truly hilarious.

—Erick Neher reviews Smash on Broadway

Tumbledown Mountain Burials; After My Father’s Memorial Service; Witching Hour Beneath Moose Mountain | The Hudson Review

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 22d

2/2
across the linoleum floor with the day’s
compost, banged the front screen door

and headed down the path by the brook.
Our last evening together, his breaths unraveled

like prayer flags in the zero cold....

The Hudson Review @hudsonreview.bsky.social · 22d

From “After My Father’s Memorial Service” by Henry Hart:

1/2
To sleep, I listened to mice scratch paths

toward poison in the attic, the metal
FOR SALE sign flap above the driveway’s

snowbank. Or was it my father?
Each night he scuffed in Army boots