Katherine Barrett Swett’s Voice Message catches attention from the Washington Independent Review of Books

We are so pleased with what contributor Rose Solari of the Washington Independent Review of Books has to say about Voice Message. Katherine Barrett Swett’s first full-length collection is featured alongside three other collections that present impressive poetic sequences (Swett’s is a royal crown of sonnets). In this review, Solari illuminates the emotional depth and skilled formalism that make Voice Message such a compelling read.

Katherine Barrett Swett’s first full-length collection, Voice Message (Autumn House Press), is a tour de force in which formal mastery is wedded to emotional power. The book is centered around the death of the poet narrator’s daughter, but if you’re thinking we’re in confessional territory here, think again. Swett is a formalist in the best sense, using her skill — particularly with sonnet form, the predominant form used in the book — not to distance the reader from experience, but to distill it for us.

Read the full review here.