Reviews

A review of In a Field of Cotton: Mississippi River Delta Poems
Reviewed by David Armand, Delta Poetry Review

http://deltapoetryreview.com/2021feb-larry-thomas-interview-bookreview.html  
(Review is below the interview)

 


A review of In a Field of Cotton: Mississippi River Delta Poems by Dr. Ken Hada appears in the following issue of Dragon Poet Review (page 64):

https://dragonpoetreview.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/dpr-fall2019.pdf



Review of In a Field of Cotton: Mississippi River Delta Poems by Dr. Joe Benevento, poetry editor of the Green Hills Literary Lantern, and appears in Vol. XXX of the journal.



Review of As If Light Actually Matters: New & Selected Poems, written by Dr. Joe Benevento, a professor of creative writing at Truman State University (MO) and poetry editor of the Green Hills Literary Lantern.



Reviews of Art Museums and The Circus

(Nick Brush, reviewer, The Oklahoma Review)

http://larrydthomas.com/Review-Art_Museums_and_The_Circus(byNickBrush).pdf



Review of As If Light Actually Matters: New & Selected Poems, published in Texas Books in Review.

by Sarah Cortez

http://www.tbr.txstate.edu/archives/fall-2015/as-if-light-matters.html



Review of The Lobsterman's Dream: Poems of the Coast of Maine in CyberSoleil: A Literary Journal

by Walt McLaughlin  

http://www.cybersoleiljournal.com/index.php?lay=show&ac=article&Id=539729451&Ntype=5



Review of The Lobsterman's Dream in the Kennebec Journal/Morning Sentinel

Dana Wilde, reviewer

http://www.centralmaine.com/2015/01/08/off-radar-the-lobstermans-dream/

 

 

Review of The Goatherd in CyberSoleil: A Literary Journal

Hardy Jones, reviewer

http://www.cybersoleiljournal.com/index.php?lay=show&ac=article&Id=539729448&Ntype=5


 

Review of Art Museums

A New Way of Seeing Seeing written by Marilyn Westfall. Partial extract: “Art Museums, a chapbook of poetry by Larry Thomas, is as richly textured as a Rembrandt painting. Each poem explores a different museum, from New York’s Museum of Modern Art to the Chinati Foundation’s contemporary art collection in Marfa, Texas. With utmost elegance, Thomas comments on architectural style, lighting, particular artworks, and even on sound, such as the "sibilance/of shuffled/shoes" on "gleaming marble" at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore…”

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2PKDWMA5YE5F2



Review of The Lobsterman’s Dream (Poems of the Coast of Maine)

Written by David Bowles.  Published in The Monitor (newspaper of the Texas Rio Grande Valley).

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23295085-the-lobsterman-s-dream#other_reviews



Review of Uncle Ernest.
Written by Dr. Ken Hada, professor of English at East Central University, OK.  It was published in Cybersoleil: A Literary Journal.

http://www.cybersoleiljournal.com/index.php?lay=show&ac=article&Id=539562010&Ntype=5



Review of Uncle Ernest (excerpts).

Virtual Artists Collective, Chicago, "Responses and Reviews" (March 2, 2013)

Full Review: http://vacpoetry.org/2013/03/02/uncle-ernest/



Review of A Murder of Crows

Written by Jeffrey Alfier and appears in the Fall/Winter 2011-2012 Issue of the Valparaiso Poetry Review (Volume XIII, Number 1)

 http://www.valpo.edu/vpr/v13n1/v13n1prose/alfierreviewthomas.php



The Skin of Light (Dalton Publishing 2010)

Review written by Joe Benevento, Professor of Creative Writing, Truman State University (MO)

http://ghll.truman.edu/ghll22/GHLL%20XXII%20nonfiction/Benevento%20reviews%202011.html



A brief review of A Murder of Crows

written by Benjamin Myers

http://myerspoetry.blogspot.com/2011/04/terror-and-transcendence-brief-review.html



The Skin of Light (Dalton Publishing 2010)

(A complete review published in Texas Books in Review, Vol. XXX, No. 1, Spring 2010, is viewable here.)



The Lighthouse Keeper (Timberline Press 2001)


     “Larry Thomas has the limberness and attention of a poet who produces daily.  Nothing is beneath his interest, and in his confident hands we discover nothing is beneath ours, either.  His choice of metaphor ranges omnivorously from Medusa, Jonah, Comanche, and horror story to a casual reference to melanoma or the simple description of a little boy’s kite as “stinking new.” You are reassured by the realization that he will go wherever he must to transfer the totality of what he is seeing into bites we can savor and shunt down the line to nourish our cells.”


Maggie Jochild, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review (No. 17 Fall/Winter 2001)



Amazing Grace (Texas Review Press 2001)


     “As promised in the title, the poems of Amazing Grace are rendered with a poise that almost belies the strength of the language and images from which they are made.  Thomas has captured the spirit that underlies the physical geography of the land and the hearts of the people who have helped to shape it.  In the dust from which his characters spring, and in the “rich / red fields / of deep lineage” that so patiently await their return, lie the beginning and end of us all.”


Andrew Geyer, Iron Horse Literary Review (Spring Thaw 2002)



The Woodlanders (Pecan Grove Press 2002)


     “The Woodlanders is a chapbook full of rich and well-crafted poems that appeal to all the senses; it would benefit the rural as well as the city dweller or any other reader interested in the marriage of people to environment.  It would be an honor to follow a guide as perceptive as Larry Thomas, a guide who would intuitively direct one’s view but never obstruct the view to self-discovery.”


Santiago Garcia, Louisiana Literature (19/1 Spring/Summer 2002)



Where Skulls Speak Wind (Texas Review Press 2004)


     “Last year in these pages I reviewed a number of recent volumes by Texas poets who were of high sophistication.  To these must be added Larry D. Thomas.  Thomas may be the most sophisticated of the lot.

     “His subject matter is West Texas and the Davis Mountains.  He writes of Marfa and Alpine, Fort Davis and Marathon, places that are elemental, with heavy winds, blue northers and floods. His poems are populated by vultures, ravens, longhorns and stallions, mule traders and half-breeds.  Yet somehow he brings a great dignity to his pages.  One feels the sympathy he has for his subjects and their simple lives.  He writes in bold strokes and with bold colors, as in a painting by van Gogh.”


Robert Phillips (Houston Chronicle February 6, 2005)



Stark Beauty (Timberline Press 2005)


     “This is the music of the West, music of the language when it’s hard at work.  These are poems that dance, that make you want to go out on the wooden floor and two-step.  Listen to some of the internal assonance and consonance in “Bones”: “sun / someone,” “them / wind,” “clean / cane,” “clear / air,” “radiant / sun,” and “skin / within” (within a single line; the others are mostly end-of-line sounds).  This aural beauty rings like bells in clean cold air.”


Barbara Crooker (Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review No. 27 Fall/Winter 2006)



With the Light of Apricots (Lily Literary Review Press, 2007)

  

     "There is a quietly relentless power running through the lyrics of With the Light of Apricots, Larry D. Thomas’s sixth book of poems, and his first published by an online publisher, Lily Press. Thomas has won many awards for his poetry, including two Texas Review Poetry Prizes, and is the recipient of two Pushcart prize nominations. With the Light of Apricots is unquestionably worthy of these honors, a work that celebrates life’s hard truths and riddles through a determined eloquence.

     "All of Larry Thomas’s works exhibit, with clarity and immediacy, poems that witness powerfully to the world around us. In With the Light of Apricots, a common fruit– overripe, vividly-colored, or pungently sweet—proves a semaphore for that which weighs most on the human heart; a heart that, however subdued, maladapted, or even denied, might finally persevere."

   

Jeffrey Alfier, Rattle (October 30, 2009)



The Fraternity of Oblivion (Timberline Press 2008)


     “In the same way that the cold chrome of the monstrous machines of these bad men reflects the marred landscape of the moon back to itself, these poems act to reflect our fascination “with the sanctity / of taboo” back to us.  As in his other collections, Thomas’ fondness for simple language, sparse images, and short lines make those reflections act as magnification; we look without completely realizing we’re looking at ourselves.  Thomas leaves up to us whether or not we use the opportunity to squirm and look away or steel ourselves and unflinchingly inspect our similarities with his savage characters.”


Courtney O’Banion (Texas Books in Review Vol. XXVIII, Nos. 1 & 2 Spring/Summer 2008)



Larry D. Thomas: New and Selected Poems (TCU Press 2008)


     “Larry D. Thomas’s New and Selected Poems offers lush descriptions of the Southwest while exploring such universal themes as love, faith, and the “howling darkness” of memory.  Including poems from the author’s seven previous collections, this volume presents his body of work as a consistent artistic vision, in which barren Texas landscapes take on a host of meanings for their speakers.  Written in free verse tercets and quatrains, Thomas’s poems offer not only glimpses into the natural world, but portraits of those whose lives remain inextricably tied to the land, a combination that proves striking throughout.”


Kristina Marie Darling (Concho River Review Vol. XXII, No. 2 Fall 2008)