Reviews

Hush Harbor by Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta

zarvindale's review

5.0

Lately it takes me an hour to finish a poetry collection of 100 pages and less. With this one, I took my sweet time to reread and digest each poem and each section. Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta’s residency in Iowa in 2015 must’ve refined the way she writes. Her poems here are much clearer than those that appear on her previous collections. The lines are more connected, and the poems in general look amusing, as always, on the pages. She has managed to stick to one theme this time too. Her love poems are informed by strong emotions as well as bourgeois art. She takes on visual cues, with the paintings and colors, as much as she mentions auditory effects, such as an arpeggio and a hush. Lonely poems gather and find port in this book, which also acts as a harbor for lucidity.

burmecia's review

3.0

How do I talk about this book without being overly annoyed by that one John Garcia Villa-esque poem in the last section of this collection? Anyway I’ll probably write my actual thoughts on this book later and maybe through a reread but honestly I think I just want to keep a few lines of verse that I actually and genuinely loved in this collection and pass the book to someone else. IDK. Maybe I would like this more if I wasn’t so unimpressed by her interview of Lang Leav, who I do not like (as a writer) at all, which probably says something about Katigbak-Lacuesta.

dannapena's review

"Today, as it was all these years ago, it is still there. Whatever it is
I have no words for, in mine or in any English."