RaveCleveland Review of BooksAs with all good place-based writing, Philomath is more than pastoral; it is intensely personal and intimate with its surroundings. Walker-Figueroa demonstrates that a place is more than its ecosystem and infrastructure. More than anything else, it is its people ... Philomath is riddled with moments that make themselves aware of our Anthropocene’s extinction events and progressive societal dilapidation. There is a grappling that ensues—how to deal with personal pain amidst public and pervasive suffering, something becoming a hallmark of contemporary poetry delivering a cultural critique. It is important to note however that this book is not merely a compendium of suffering. The characters lead textured lives and there is a wild abundance of tenderness ...
Emily Skaja
PositiveThe Cleveland Review of BooksIt is in the space carved out by Plath’s poems that Brute by Emily Skaja enters, her voice echoing among the chamber inhabited by poets like Sylvia Plath and Anne Carson ... Brute is itself a chamber inhabited by strangeness doled out into manageable doses, taking the shape of four sections in the book, corresponding loosely to loss, grief, anger, and strength. The eerie landscape creeps into the poems along with recurring images of birds and flight ... The narrative is disjointed and takes place in recurrent cycles, often times revisiting the same event or emotion. Yet, Brute is intent on breaking the silence and cycle of abuse ... Brute embraces the limitations of narrative in response to trauma—becoming a portrait completed in layers, each successive one bringing the image into clarity. Brute becomes a recreation narrative, with each new cycle re-manifesting the same characters in different iterations, slowly growing towards health.
