Finishing Line Press

FLP BOOK OF THE DAY: House of Broken Tables by Allison Wilkins
WINNER of the 2025 Donna Wolf-Palacio Poetry Prize

On SALE: https://finishinglinepress.com/product/house-of-broken-tables-by-allison-wilkins-winner-of-the-2025-donna-wolf-palacio-poetry-prize/

House of Broken Tables contends with visions and prophecies, with what is seen but not understood, with what is spoken but risks being lost in translation. Located in conjured landscapes that are at once ancient and contemporary, Greek and not Greek, these poems give voice to the desires of mythic women who are often forced to the edges of others’ narratives. Here Calypso, Penelope, the prophetess Cassandra, and the princess Nausicaa, demand to be heard in their own words, on their own terms. Lingering in moments of rupture, these poems enact delicate rituals in an attempt to mend what’s broken.

Allison Wilkins is the author of Girl Who (2014) and her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in Sierra Magazine, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Superstition Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Michigan Quarterly Review and elsewhere. She is the assistant director for Writing Workshops in Greece: Thessaloniki and Thasos.

PRAISE:

Welcome to the House of Broken Tables, but watch your step. As you move from room to room, stanza to stanza (subtle sonnets, ironic couplets), you will encounter smashed plates, a “cloth napkin strangled by a ring,” a scarred bedside table; the “grief of leaving,” the “joy hot enough to burn pine.” You will encounter goats and peacocks, hybrids and hooved beings; Nausicaa and Calypso, Odysseus and Orpheus. In this collection, mythic in scope, intimate in detail, Allison Wilkins adds to that very necessary contemporary sub-genre of poetry: women reclaiming ancient tales and figures, subverting and modernizing them, making them our own. The voice is powerful, even oracular. Cassandra, too, speaks: this time, listen to her.
–Moira Egan

In House of Broken Tables, Allison Wilkins gathers the shimmer from what’s been shattered in myth and in modern times. This book is a graceful atlas of longing and a gorgeous testament for what love leaves behind.
–Aimee Nezhukumatathil

In House of Broken Tables, Allison Wilkins builds a richly intimate world out of fragments, miniatures, and wry self-portraits. These poems call to one another across pages and centuries, the mythic tangling and overlapping with the contemporary, the epic mingling with the finite, and the knowable conversing with the mysterious. While acknowledging that “on the wrong day anything looks like ruin,” Wilkins is a master at reassembling what’s broken.
–Chelsea Rathburn

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FLP BOOK OF THE DAY: Passing Through by Ellen Rosenbloom

On SALE: https://finishinglinepress.com/product/passing-through-by-ellen-rosenbloom/

Passing Through traverses a marriage, a death of a father and the wonders of a mother and sister, plus extended family. It deals with the sometimes ordinary and other times extraordinary day to day. It travels to Niagara Falls, Peru and other locations and often stays at home with the drama of daily life being the main subject.

Ellen Rosenbloom has an MFA from the New School in Poetry. She has a BS from Skidmore College in Fine Art. She lives with her favorite person, her husband Adam in New York City.Her poems have been published in many literary journals and websites. Her first chapbook of poems, Past Life Recall was published in 2024 by Bottlecap Press. Her second chapbook, Traveling was published by Finishing Line Press, October 2025. She’s over the moon to see this full-length collection, Passing Throughpublished also by Finishing Line Press.

PRAISE:

The poems in Passing Through are witty, direct, intimate, and subtly political. Through them, we meet a woman grieving her father, celebrating a great mid-life love, and contemplating life’s gifts and contradictions. I read it in a sitting and immediately returned to page 1 to prolong my time in her company. This book is a delight.
–Ona Gritz, Author of Everywhere I Look, winner of the Clara Johnson Award in Women’s Literature.

Rosenbloom goes to the heart of the matter, awakening poetry where it sleeps in the accidental dramas and unfinished episodes of day to day life.
–Frank Galuszka ,author of Cafe Vernacular

Ellen Rosenbloom‘s jaunty writings on everyday life—its simple pleasures, favorite foods, a beloved spouse—invariably lead to a surreal twist. Her new book of poems, Passing Through, leaves the reader mildly perplexed and breathless with wonder.
–Christina Waters, PhD., author of Inside the Flame, Parallax Press

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