Review Essays and Critical Prose
Beloved Communities, Lasting Divisions: Poets on Country, Culture, and Kinship (books by Julien Vocance (Alfred Nicol, translator), Ukrainian poets anthology (John Hennessy and Ostap Kin, translators), Dana Gioia, Patricia Spears Jones, and Mark Jarman) Literary Matters 15.3, Spring 2023
“For When the Days Seem Absent Any Answers”: Poets of Skepticism and Faith (books by Nicole Caruso Garcia, James Davis May, Jeff Hardin, Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, Rhina Espaillat, and Orlando Ricardo Menes) Literary Matters 15.2, Winter 2023
To Soar Among the Halcyons: Ryan Wilson’s Proteus Bound: Selected Translations, 2008-2020 32 Poems 40, Fall/Winter 2022
Fluent Phrases in a Silver Chain: On Finding Poetry in Song and Song in Poetry (books by Mike Mattison and Ernest Suarez, Anna Lena Phillips Bell, Al Basile, Quincy R. Lehr, Alexis Sears, and Robyn Hitchcock) Literary Matters 14:2, Winter 2022
“A Longing Stare and X-Ray Eye”: The Selected Poems of David Yezzi 32 Poems 19:2, Winter 2021
“Shimmering with Fragile Grace”: Poets of Public and Personal History” (books by Lesley Wheeler, January Gill O’Neil, Jenna Lê, Orlando Ricardo Menes, Amy Lemmon, Nickole Brown, Cho Oh-Hyun (Heinz Insu Fenkl, translator), and A. M. Juster) Literary Matters 13:2, Winter 2021
“Words, We Ask the World of You”: Listening to Vanished Voices (books by Jane Mead, A.V. Christie, Kate Light, Jon Tribble, William Louis-Dreyfus, Wendy Battin) Literary Matters 12:3, Spring/Summer 2020
Perennials on Fire: Ekphrastic Transformations in Adam Vines’ Out of Speech Literary Matters 12:1, Fall 2019
The Now That Is Snow: A Review of Elizabeth Spires’ A Memory of the Future Literary Matters 11:2, Winter 2019
Parnassus in Sight: a review of The Fly in the Ointment: poems by Barrymore Ashe, Joseph Harrison, Frank Hart, Vironique, Stephen Wallace. Edited and with a preface by J.H. Hobson (Syllabic Press) A review-essay that successfully evades the question, “Why is Joseph Harrison the only poet in this collection whom anyone’s ever heard of?” Unsplendid 6.3, February 2017
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Short Reviews
Review of No One Leaves the World Unhurt by John Foy Alabama Literary Review
Review of Single Bound: Krypton Nights/Amazon Days by Bryan D. Dietrich (two books published in one volume) Presence
Review of In Code by Maryann Corbett Presence
Review of Best American Poetry 2018 (Dana Gioia, guest editor; David Lehman, series editor) Presence
Ned Balbo on Andrew Hudgins’ “Mary Magdalene’s Left Foot” An entry in Michael Theune and Kim Addonizio’s Voltage Poetry project
The Two Dana Gioias [review of Pity the Beautiful] Originally appeared in Italian Americana 30.2 (2012): 227-31
Review of It was a terrible cloud at twilight by Alessandra Lynch Scroll to page 1L in the American Book Review PDF
From 1999-2009, I published poetry reviews in most issues of Antioch Review, sometimes more than one in the same issue. If you have access to JSTOR, you might click on 2000s here to have a look at them. Authors covered include Camille Dungy, Peter Everwine, Dana Gioia, Edward Hirsch, Josephine Jacobsen, Galway Kinnell, Phillis Levin, April Lindner, J. D. McClatchy, Wayne Miller, Albert Murray, Kevin Prufer, et al.
Featured image: Chambered Nautilus shell with logarithmic spiral
Ned Balbo 