Unsung Canaan Ballads is a poetry collection by Chyrel J. Jackson of culture, honesty, family, history, emotion, resilience, and literary excellence. It’s a love letter to Black people living in an imperfect and whitewashed world. This compilation celebrates the poetically lyrical sisterhood, Black poets, and Black writers. There is something for the grieving soul. Words of encouragement for the sad or hurting soul. Healing for the lost and seeking soul. During loss sometimes we fight to hold on to ourselves. This compilation of poems is healing for the brokenhearted. It reminds us that healing takes time. No one can orchestrate life events. Eventually wholeness and happiness is found through simple things. Music, art, books, nature, poetry, and family. It’s time to grab your favorite beverage and nestle into what feels like a little bit of home, Unsung Canaan Ballads.
Straight from the author, Rebecca Herz: “Locus of Control is a poetry collection written to make sense of a rapidly shifting world. In these poems, I trace the contours of neurodivergence, new motherhood, queer identity, and my work as a middle-school crisis counselor, weaving together the clinical language of therapy with the raw emotional undercurrent that rarely makes it into the office.
Across themes like countertransference, imposter syndrome, burnout, co-regulation, radical acceptance, and the intimate bewilderment of pregnancy through IVF, these poems explore what it means to hold hope for others while learning to hold it for myself.
In writing Locus of Control, poetry became the place where I could confess my uncertainty, and acknowledge the spiritual questions that trail my work: What does it mean to witness another person’s pain? What is the cost of caretaking? Where is the line between healing and harm? What remains of the self when we spend our days giving ourselves away?
At the same time, the personal and political never stay separate-fertility treatments alongside news alerts of disaster, Jewish identity intersecting with queer family-making, motherhood emerging through statistics, ultrasound screens, and wishful thinking.
Above all, Locus of Control is an invitation to find resonance within the ambiguity. These poems don’t attempt to fix or advise. They sit with uncertainty, and trust the reader to find themselves within the space that remains.
All proceeds support Jewish Queer Youth (JQY), honoring the young people who inspire my work and my belief that healing is possible, even when the path is nonlinear.”
Rebecca (N.) Herz is the author of Locus of Control (2026) and Homecoming and other poems (2023), Prolific Pulse LLC. Her publications include Spillwords, Social Justice Inks, Sinister Wisdom, The Madrigal, Fine Lines, and The Last Leaves. You can find her on Medium and Instagram @rebeccaherzpoet
What others have to say:
In Locus of Control, Rebecca Herz celebrates empathy in the poem “Radical Acceptance,” a rallying cry for making peace with the unknown. From chance encounters, daily interactions, and familial bonds, like becoming a parent, Locus of Control deftly explores society, from the good, the bad, the ugly, and all that is left unsaid, unanswered, or lost. Strikingly, these lost pieces are found in vivid language and a baby’s first touch, finding the silver lining, even if you don’t know the answer, becauseLocus of Control is about relishing in the centre of gravity despite blips and questions.
Lindsay Soberano Wilson, Poet and Author of Hoods of Motherhood and Breaking Up With the Cobalt Blues: Poems for Healing
In this new collection, Herz’s craft proves worthy of her ambitious aesthetic–that of blending opposites, of intertwining the philosophical and the ordinary. In similar fashion, her poetic voice rings with both confidence and vulnerability. I find the poems that track her speaker’s work as a school therapist–backlit by her own earlier struggles as a student–especially compelling.
Yehoshua November, Author of The Concealment of Endless Light
Locus of Control by Rebecca Herz is a witty melange of poetry and therapeutic insight. Rebecca Herz, a school-based therapist and autistic writer, weaves together personal experience, emotional depth, and psychological concepts to explore love, loss, neurodivergence, and healing. Rebecca’s poems celebrate variegated threads of human life- fertility struggles and burnout to self-compassion and radical acceptance. These poems illuminate what it means to be human in a world shaped by longing and resilience. It is a tender, intelligent, and restorative collection for readers seeking comfort, connection, and clarity.
What a wonderful time we had discussing this and that and, oh yeah, writing and poetry. Juntu Ahjee is as much a friend as an artist in his own right. It’s been four years since our last talk and a lot of changes have happened. Just sit back and listen in on this fun interview. When you’re done, go check out Ahjee’s books. There’s not a one I have not fallen in love with. Give it a shot. https://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Store-Juntu-Ahjee/s?rh=n%3A133140011%2Cp_27%3AJuntu%2BAhjee
We are pleased to announce that “Perihelion” by Roberta Batorsky is now ready for your bookshelf. Her debut poetry book, “Perihelion” is a poetry collection which has been carefully crafted, critiqued, and polished for the best of reading.
About “Perihelion”
This book uses powerful, colorful imagery and often humor, applied to everyday life situations, to delve deep into the realms of love, loss, childhood, memory, aging, relationships, partnership and friendship. The writer’s command of language, including colorful and strong vocabulary, will appeal to poetry readers of all stripes in its accuracy, insight and universality. Her critical insight and unsparing explorations of feelings will bring readers into her circle with recognition of the beauty of her words and the similarities with their own experiences. Her love for nature and ability to describe people’s lived experiences, mental problems, societal upheaval, relationship struggles, love for family, and deep love for, and familiarity with, literature will inspire all who pick up her book. Her style is a giving and loving one which will be meaningful to all readers.
Note the cover design by Kelli Jackson of KRynae Design Co. She really captured the meaning of the poem by the same name.
What others have to say:
It gives me great pleasure to introduce you to Perihelion, the debut collection of poetry by Roberta Batorsky. Roberta’s poetry has taken the literary community by storm, her words will make you want to sit up and think, stir emotions, as she pulls you into her world. Her poetry reflects her interest in people, through lived experiences and the world of science. Each one is full of humour, pathos, and empathy. She is incredibly articulate and precise, reflecting her intellectual ability as an educator.
This collection has over one hundred poems; each one is a masterpiece in its own right, beautifully crafted to perfection. Each poem gives you an insight into her life and the lives of others, incredibly observant and full of wit, as you are transported to her world.
This book will appeal to readers of all ages and genders because it is relatable, to enchant, move and delight. Stand out poems include “American Standard or The Loo’s Lament,” “Social Dancing on Neptoon,” “Lost Lives Matter,” “Unstrung, for Richard,” “I Remember It,” “If I die first,” “Picking Apples in Stilettos,” “Bismillah,” “Autumn Finds Me,” “My Dis Connect,” “Drinking with Mom,” “Man to Man,” “The Walkers in the Rain,” and “Gasp.” This poignant book of poetry is an entertaining read, will make you laugh out loud, smile in places and shed a tear, extremely relatable and utterly brilliant, it will be a welcome addition to your bookshelf, a classic in the making.
Sarfraz Ahmed, Poet and Writer (UK)
Roberta Batorsky’s “Perihelion” carries rich layers of meaning in the context of poetic creativity. Like planets drawing close to the sun, the poet’s voice circles the most intense experiences of human life: mental health struggles (“Unit 4,” “New Year to Be Born”), grief (“Irreplaceable, for Mariana”, “Tremolo”), and love (“You Are All I Need”). These are moments of most excellent exposure, where both illumination and pain work together. It suggests that poetry itself becomes a perihelion. In this space, the poet dares to move nearest to the burning core of experience, and in doing so, offers illumination to the readers. In “Perihelion”, readers encounter humour, grief, survival, and renewal in equal measure. It is a collection that burns close, like its namesake, leaving the reader illuminated.
Roberta Batorsky is a Biology teacher and freelance science writer. Her poetry reflects her interest in people, their lived experiences and science. She writes with empathy, knowledge and humor and has been published in Heron Clan, Fine Lines, NJ Bards, Delaware Valley Poets and other collections. This is her first book. She lives in NJ with her husband and has 2 children and 2 grandchildren.
Home Remedies: a review of Cancer Courts My Mother by LindaAnn LoSchiavo. Prolific Pulse Press. Raleigh, NC. November 2025
It would be hard to find a person whose life, directly or indirectly, has not been touched by cancer. Just as cancer takes many forms, people’s mental, emotional, and physical responses vary. LindaAnn LoSchiavo’s response is this book. Out of ugliness, the frightful fact cancer kills, she has wrought beauty, this sequence of poems. A reader’s appreciation of them may be heightened by taking a look at their metaphorical resonance and their distinction between honesty and artifice; and, ultimately, by considering the voice of the poet, a daughter speaking about her parents.
The book’s title Cancer Courts My Mother suggests an extended metaphor. The tenor, cancer, is a suitor. A suitor is defined as a man who courts a woman. Although the title suggests otherwise, the woman the suitor courts is the daughter, the poet. In “Arrival” she says, “I know he’s made himself at home, the dark prince …conveying her into his sunless realm.” Yes, death is conveying the mother but it’s daughter who knows. And she is the one being courted, the one who hears the dark prince’s seductive whispers, the one for whom “terminal illness / twirls out of the speech of men.” At the end of “Tick Tick” she says, “Cancer, biding his time, taunts me.” In “Early Visit from the Grim Reaper,” “His baritone commanded me to GO!” In the “Bartering with Cancer,” the octave begins with “When medicine has nothing more to give / There’s only daughters and morphine…” And in the turn, the second half, she says, “I’m stunned.” In “Jaundice,” she says, “my mother wound up with him —Cancer —,” but in the realm of life, cancer courts the daughter, the maker of these poems.
They are interesting for their distinction between fact and fiction, honesty and artifice. Interesting, compelling, haunting. “Diagnosis” begins the sequence. Its abrupt enjambments signal an urgency that inclines the speaker towards artifice.
Transformation’s required, starting with your voice, Hemorrhaging with euphemisms, lies. You could Be an actor fed fake dialogue, words almost A well-rehearsed performance. You could be- Come an acrobat, clutching the girders of hope. A Safety net’s missing. The laughter is a ghost’s.
The abiding artifice is the poems.
Even imagination threatened to betray me, failing to make good on the fancies I’d hope to invent. But pen and paper became the dependable parents I’d always longed for. With them, I sketched realities I could eventually escape to.
That passage is the conclusion of “Mother Magnified,” which is an honest account of the friction between the speaker and her mother, one aspect of this mother and daughter relationship. Yet another realm of reality, that not only counters the artifice “an actor fed fake dialogue” but also the wooing of “the dark prince” is the life of plants. In “Green Nursemaid” the daughter tends her mother’s plants, “suturing new healthiness into the exhausted potting mixture.” While other flourishes of artifice appear in the forms of mythic “mermaids” and the “prayer candles” of religious ritual, the plants symbolize continual life, and, in “Living through the Dying,” which begins with the imperative “Resuscitate the wilted,” their tenacity and the poet’s.
To consider the voice in the poems is to consider the speaker, a poet facing the grim reality that many of her reading audience have faced or will face: cancer kills. The poet’s mother’s suffering is terminal; then there’s her father’s suffering and her own. Her voice, what is said, and how, reflects the human heart in conflict with itself. Signs that say Fuck Cancer are brandished by people who hate the thing that is killing their love ones. I love, I hate —they suggest, conveying that conflict. The poet’s “realities” she “could escape to” suggests her speaking, and putting pen to paper is cathartic. She is also defiant. In “Early Visit …” the reaper says, “GO! She says “No!”
Cancer Courts My Mother consists of poems in free verse and in tradition forms. While its rhymes resolve, there is no closure; the poet’s turmoil remains. Cancer took her mother. A mother’s suffering and eventual absence, left a daughter and a spouse/ father to grieve. The poet’s grief is poignantly conveyed throughout this sequence. Towards the end she says, “When my mother died, she took home along with her.”
Peter Mladinic was born and raised in New Jersey. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1973 and earned an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Arkansas in 1985. Professor emeritus at New Mexico Junior College, where he was a member of the English faculty for thirty years. During that time, he was a board member of the Lea County Museum and president of the Lea County Humane Society. He is the author of several poetry collections.
As a teacher, I will always remain a student. In the classroom of life, l wish to work with and educate others. Whether you’re a teacher, student, or just your average person, here are a few of my "TEACHERble" moments.
Hi! my name is Sebastian (You can call me Seb!) ...welcome to my Blog. I'm a photographer from Worcester, Worcestershire, England. Thanks for dropping by! I hope you enjoy my work.
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