[caption id="attachment_373" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Sharon Bryan. BOA poet."][/caption] Gently Read Literature has emerged as one of those increasingly rare breeds - an intelligent review publication that takes the time to publish in-depth, comprehensive reviews of poetry and fiction. It doesn't matter whether a publication is online or in-print, any venue publishing thoughtful reviews these days should be celebrated and supported. We're thrilled to have Sharon Bryan's Sharp Stars (winner of the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award for 2009) reviewed by J. Michael Wahlgren for the current issue of Gently Read Literature. The review starts: "In Sharp Stars, Sharon Bryan is concerned with the use of language and its boundaries. She tackles certain concepts and analogizes them by comparison: one of which is the concept of “erasures” compared with former lovers as disappearing in a poem. The simple comparison of a star to a person is also made but Bryan, as with any concept, takes the idea a step further. In the poem “Stardust” Bryan writes “instead of seeing ourselves / wherever we look, we must see / things for what they are: stardust.” Bryan may be a romantic, at heart, and the former lovers whose presences grace the text disappear with, of course, a memory. Bryan accomplishes a lot in these pages, from introducing unique characters whose stories border reality or realities whose borders possess lasting character. In the text memory and character intertwine and to even to use an analogy, as lovers." Read the complete review here [Pinwheeling: J. Michael Wahlgren on Sharon Bryan’s Sharp Stars]