House of the Cardamom Seed by Penelope Scambly Schott / Cherry Grove / 2018 / 978-1-62549-270-8 One of the pleasures of making a pilgrimage to Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon is sometimes stumbling on readings by writers you haven't heard of. Such happened to me recently with Penelope Scambly Schott, the first of three poets in a group reading. I enjoyed all three, though … [Read more...]
Raena Shirali’s Gilt, reviewed by Daschielle Louis
Gilt by Raena Shirali / YesYes Books / 978-1-936919-41-3 / 2017 I remember the conditioning well. Women teaching me the ways of being woman. Being clean. Most importantly, unseen. Gilt opens a window to gender ideologies embedded into the fabric of our society. Women teaching girls how to be a desirable wife. How to go with the flow. But that’s not all that Raena Shirali is … [Read more...]
The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way: On Writers and Writing by Charles Bukowski
The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way: On Writers and Writing by Charles Bukowski. Edited by David Stephen Calonne / City Lights Books / 978-0-87286-759-8 / 2018 I kind of don't know how they keep coming, but Charles Bukowski was such a prolific writer, and perhaps so disorganized, that posthumous collections of both prose and poetry continue to trickle out, 24 years … [Read more...]
Apocalyptic Language: Reading Brooks Rexroat’s Thrift Store Coats
Thrift Store Coats by Brooks Rexroat / Orson's Publishing / 978-0991446391 Brooks Rexroat’s debut short story collection, Thrift Store Coats explores the harsh and often unforgiving landscape of the Midwestern United States. Across these twelve stories, his work examines the way that place changes people, how it shapes them, and what that means for their day-to-day lives. … [Read more...]
Katy Wareham Morris’ Cutting the Green Ribbon: a review by Antony Owen
Cutting the Green Ribbon by Katy Wareham Morris / Hesterglock Press / 9781999915346 / 45 pages / 2018 Cutting the Green Ribbon arrives at a turning point in 21st-century arts, with women emerging triumphant from a subjugating demographic of muzzling inequality in the arts, raising their voices anthemic from abuse scandals to setting new examples of excellence in poetry such … [Read more...]
Each Wild Thing’s Consent by Lauren Davis, reviewed by Sarah Stockton
Each Wild Thing’s Consent by Lauren Davis / Poetry Wolf Press / 30 pages / 2018 / digital ($8) and soft bound ($10). All proceeds benefit Dove House Advocacy Services, which provides crisis intervention and advocacy services to victims of domestic and sexual violence. In this collection evocatively titled Each Wild Thing’s Consent, the poet Lauren Davis has graced us … [Read more...]
Scorpio by Katy Bohinc, reviewed by Tom Snarsky
Scorpio by Katy Bohinc / Miami University Press / 978-1881163633 / paperback / 71 pages / 2018 ...I still believe it starts with you and me (from “Hung Out”) I remember when I was young, maybe just having cracked double digits in age, listening to CDs using a handheld CD player with wraparound headphones. It was an unwieldy thing that skipped or went soundless … [Read more...]
A kind of jazz sensibility: on Gary Lundy’s poetry
each room echoes absence by Gary Lundy / FootHills Publishing / 80 pages / 2018 It’s possible to visit Butterfly Herbs in downtown Missoula for years without realizing there is a coffee shop tucked way in the back. This was the case for poet Gary Lundy. Despite years of regular visits to the front of the shop, he didn’t discover the place until some of his friends began … [Read more...]
The Task of Translation in tasks by Víctor Rodríguez Núñez and Katherine M. Hedeen: A review essay by Olivia Lott
tasks by Víctor Rodríguez Núñez. Translated by Katherine M. Hedeen / co•im•press / 978-0988819962 / paperback / 131 pages / 2016 Reading tasks begins at its edges: a seven-part epigraph-turned-poem that brings together seven writers across different times, traditions, and languages, finding their union within the poetic I of Cuban poet Víctor Rodríguez Núñez and translator … [Read more...]
Brittany Helmick reviews Vievee Francis’ Forest Primeval
Forest Primeval by Vievee Francis / Northwestern University Press / 2016 / 978-0-8101-3243-6 Every so often I take a trip to the woods, and every time I come out having had a different experience. Heraclitus said this best with, “You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.” Such is the case each time I step into Vievee … [Read more...]
Tasha Coryell’s Hungry People reviewed by Kelly Flynn
Hungry People by Tasha Coryell / Split Lip Press / 978-1721553457 / 212 pages / August 3, 2018 On the cover of Tasha Coryell’s debut short story collection, Hungry People, a bright, monochromatic pink ice cream cone has fallen to the floor and is melting. It is a sloppy, but beautiful mess. This image is much like the characters in the book, all deeply … [Read more...]
Florilegium: Palestinian Walks
Palestinian Walks by Raja Shehadeh / Scribner (Simon and Schuster) / 2007 / 978-1416569664 Imagine the home you love despoiled by conquerors, who insist they are claiming only what is owed them. Imagine your freedom even to walk outdoors curtailed. Imagine the most powerful countries in the world refused to believe your experience, or blamed you for it when you dared … [Read more...]
Ceremonial by Carly Joy Miller, reviewed by Valorie K. Ruiz
Ceremonial by Carly Joy Miller / Orison Books / 978-0-9964397-7-0 / 2018 Ceremonial, a debut full-length release from Carly Joy Miller, is praise and rage blended into one. It’s a delicate balance of acrobatics, on a tightrope of tone. Miller has created a collection that speaks of the magic “under a sky that folds/ like an eyelid.” This is a collection of “desire and … [Read more...]
Frivolity and Elegy: On Dennis Lee’s Heart Residence: Collected Poems 1967-2017
Heart Residence: Collected Poems 1967-2017 by Dennis Lee. Edited by Robert Bringhurst. / House of Anansi / 978-1487001490 /2017 Like many readers, I encountered the writing of Dennis Lee at least twice for the first time. The initial occasion was before I can recall. My mother worked as a children’s storyteller and librarian, and I grew up within earshot of his most … [Read more...]
Luxury and Modernism: Architecture and the Object in Germany 1900-1933
Luxury and Modernism: Architecture and the Object in Germany 1900-1933 by Robin Schuldenfrei / Princeton University Press / 2018 / 978-0691175126 / 338 pages with 74 color and 126 black and white illustrations. In this study showcasing the paradoxes --- hypocrisies even --- of some of German Modernism’s most illustrious utopian architects and object-makers, Robin … [Read more...]
Experiments in the Function of Language: Reading Laura Riding’s Experts Are Puzzled
Experts Are Puzzled by Laura Riding / Ugly Duckling Presse / 978-1937027865 / May 1, 2018 / 144 pages Laura Riding’s Experts Are Puzzled is a difficult book to classify. At times it looks like a collection of short stories or parables, at other times it looks like a series of philosophical observations. Regardless of this ambiguity, Experts Are Puzzled is a clear and … [Read more...]
To The Many: Collected Early Works by Lola Ridge, reviewed by Billy Mills
To the Many: Collected Early Works by Lola Ridge. Daniel Tobin, ed. / Little Island Press / August 2018 Lola Ridge’s life was, in many ways, a tale of her times. Born Rose Emily Ridge in Dolphin’s Barn in Dublin, she and her mother emigrated to New Zealand as a child after the death of her father. She acquired a stepfather with a taste for Shakespeare and drink, married … [Read more...]
American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes reviewed by John Yohe
American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes / Penguin / 2018 / paperback / 9780143133186 I knew Terrance Hayes' new book was going to be powerful when some of the poems appeared in the American Poetry Reviewrecently. I am not disappointed. American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin is, I'm calling it, the best book of poetry of the year. It's … [Read more...]
Douglass by Day / Douglass by Night: Reading F. Douglas Brown’s ICON
ICON by F. Douglas Brown / Civil Coping Mechanisms / 2018 / 978-1948700009 Icon is an ekphrasis of the place where personal and global histories coalesce. F. Douglas Brown examines the prominent images of those who have shaped his past. Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass (the poet’s namesake) take center stage. Prominent icons are transformed into art. They become walls, … [Read more...]
Nona Caspers’ The Fifth Woman, reviewed by Noah Sanders
The Fifth Woman by Nona Caspers / Sarabande Books / 160 pages / 978-1946448170 / August 14, 2018 The death central to Nona Casper’s incredible new book, The Fifth Woman (Sarabande Books), happens within pages of the book starting. Michelle, the live-in girlfriend of the book’s unnamed narrator, is hit by a car while riding her bike to work and dies in the ambulance on the … [Read more...]
Nothing Good Can Come from This by Kristi Coulter, reviewed by Noah Sanders
Nothing Good Can Come from This by Kristi Coulter / MCD x FSG Originals / 978-0374286200 / 224 pg. / August 7, 2018 The best of addiction memoirs brings a sense of guilt with it. You read a well-penned piece about someone's struggle with alcohol and then you slink away to your question and stare shamefully at your cold glass of 4:00pm wine. You dog-ear a page and then try to … [Read more...]
Echo Bay: Poems by Jennifer Battisti, reviewed by Emily Hoover
Echo Bay: Poems by Jennifer Battisti / Tolsun Books / 9781948800013 / 2018 / paperback; 42 pp. Jennifer Battisti’s chapbook of poems, Echo Bay, has its roots in the sand and rock of Las Vegas. Battisti studied creative writing at the College of Southern Nevada, currently works with the Las Vegas Poets Organization, and has published with several area journals and … [Read more...]
Absences: A Sequence by John A. Griffin, reviewed by Wm. Anthony Connolly
Absences: A Sequence by John A. Griffin / The Esthetic Apostle / In The Presence of Absence In ancient philosophy, the soul is described as a slab of wax. When the soul is impacted by experience an impression is left, often described as the glyph of a signet ring pressed down into the supple wax. Memory, then, is the tracing of what’s left behind, the outline of what … [Read more...]
Eileen R. Tabios’ Manhattan: An Archaeology reviewed by Neil Leadbeater
Manhattan: An Archaeology by Eileen R. Tabios / Paloma Press / ISBN: 978-1-365-87509-0 / 2017 Manhattan, probably from the Lenape language word Mannahatta, meaning "island of many hills," is the most densely populated borough of New York City, its economic and administrative center, and its historical birthplace. Locally it is often referred to simply as The City. However, … [Read more...]
A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley, reviewed by Michael Welch
A Lucky Man by Graywolf Press / 978-1555978051 / hardcover / May 1, 2018 In his debut short story collection, A Lucky Man, Jamel Brinkley traces the arch of fractured masculinity through the lives of nine black men, ranging from the precipice of puberty to the dimming lights of youth. At first glance, Brinkley’s characters appear to stand and stumble as they try to attain … [Read more...]
Mortal Trash: Poems by Kim Addonizio, reviewed by John Yohe
Mortal Trash: Poems by Kim Addonizio / W. W. Norton / 978-0-393-35434-8 / paperback / August 1, 2017 I've reviewed Kim Addonizio before, for her short story collection The Palace of Illusions (2015). I still think of her as a poet, though she's one of those rare writers that can write both, plus non-fiction (like in her essay collection Bukowski In A Sundress (2016), but … [Read more...]
A Shimmering Blue: a review of Susana H. Case’s Drugstore Blue
Drugstore Blue by Susana H. Case / Five Oaks Press / 2017 / 9781944355340 / 71 pages Susana H. Case is an American original. In poem after poem, book after book, she brings her incisive wit and poetic flair to a variety of landscapes and situations. In Earth and Below (2013), Case explored the worlds of workers who mine the earth for copper. In 4 Rms w Vu (2014), she mined … [Read more...]
farnessity by Randee Silv, reviewed by John Greiner
farnessity by Randee Silv / dancing girl press & studio / 2018 Without a doubt we are living in disorientating times and in these disorientating times we are the receptacles of a plethora of information coming from multiple sources. With our technological advancement confusion takes its place upon the throne of human reason. In such a society, to believe in a linear … [Read more...]
Book Review – Betwixt-and-Between: Essays On the Writing Life
Betwixt-and-Between: Essays On the Writing Life by Jenny Boully / Coffee House Press / $16.95 / 140 pgs. Jenny Boully’s fifth book, Betwixt and Between: Essays On the Writing Life, does not neatly assimilate into the tradition of writers writing about writing. Historically, these books blend memoir and how-to into quick, comprehensive, and illustrious reads, most famously … [Read more...]
Book Review: Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character
Kay Redfield Jamison. Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character. (New York: Knopf, 2017) 560 pages with extensive clinical footnotes, primary source documents, and passages from Lowell’s oeuvre. In a certain way, Robert Lowell (1917-1977), widely acclaimed in his lifetime as the curator of his mania and thus its commander, seems a … [Read more...]
PRE- by Barbara Tomash reviewed by Dina Paulson-McEwen
PRE- by Barbara Tomash / Black Radish Books / paperback / 74 pages / ISBN 978-0-9979524-6-9 / 2018 PRE-, the fourth poetry collection from California-based poet Barbara Tomash, will delight (lay) lexicographers and otherwise language lovers, dissectors, obsesionados. Her interest is prefixes; how “beginning” functions as an introduction to meaning from a word’s initial … [Read more...]
12 Points: tenderling by Emily Corwin
tenderling by Emily Corwin / Stalking Horse Press / 2018 / 64pgs. Before diving into the book proper, a point to say that I very much appreciate that Emily Corwin’s debut full-length collection comes in at 64 pages. That’s not because I wanted to speed through Corwin’s gurlesque world, but because in general, contemporary poetry collections seem to be overstuffed with … [Read more...]
Homing In: Our Sudden Museum by Robert Fanning, reviewed by Z.G. Tomaszewski
Our Sudden Museum by Robert Fanning / Salmon Poetry / 2017 / 978-1-910669-67-9 / 82 pages In Our Sudden Museum, poet Robert Fanning is no stranger to tragedy. As readers of this collection, we become witness to a landscape deepened with heart-felt longings. Here, in his third book, we see that it is dedicated, in part, to the poet’s father, sister, and brother, all of whom … [Read more...]
Holy Ghost by David Brazil, reviewed by Michael Kirby
Holy Ghost by David Brazil / City Lights Books / 9780872867147 / 113 pages / May 2017 Originating with the poststructuralists (Derrida and The Gift of Death being one example), then reaching a sort of apex in Badiou’s Saint Paul, the religious turn in continental philosophy continues to garner interest. And despite valid criticism of the “movement,” there is no denying that … [Read more...]
Jenny Zhang’s Sour Heart, reviewed by Ryan Kim
Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang / Lenny (Random House) / 320 pages / 0399589386 / August 1, 2017 In “My Days and Nights of Terror,” Mande, a Chinese immigrant, is made fun of by Korean classmates for her accent. The self-hatred is both ironic and hypocritical, evident in Mande’s fellow immigrants and herself. “No one had it in them to have a heart for anyone, not even … [Read more...]
Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan, reviewed by Eric D. Lehman
Richard Brautigan’s 1967 novella Trout Fishing in America is a difficult book. The opening chapter, “The Cover for Trout Fishing in America,” immediately puts the reader off balance, with a description of the actual book cover that we enter into, as if it is a magic portal. “Around five o’clock in the afternoon of my cover for Trout Fishing in America, people gather in the park … [Read more...]
Marc Olmsted reviews Dime Bag: Stories 1978–1986 by Vincent Zangrillo
Dime Bag: Stories 1978–1986 by Vincent Zangrillo / Sensitive Skin Press / paperback / 978-1545465004 There are two main differences to Vincent Zangrillo's account, Dime Bag, from the usual down-and-out- drug tale --- first, his "language," his voice, which has the natural speech of the street as well as his own intelligence nailed down to the point that we hear him talking … [Read more...]
Filthy Labors: Poems by Lauren Marie Schmidt, reviewed by Eugene A. Melino
Filthy Labors by Lauren Marie Schmidt / Curbstone Books / ISBN: 978-0810134690 / 104 pages / 2017 I was nursing another cold Peroni at a wobbly table at the Bowery Poetry Club when I first heard Lauren Marie Schmidt read “In Defense of Poetry,” the lead-off poem in her third collection, Filthy Labors. The turn on that free verse sonnet whipped me right out of my boozy … [Read more...]
Book Review – The Education of a Young Poet by David Biespiel
The Education of a Young Poet by David Biespiel / Counterpoint / 978-1619029934 / October 10, 2017 In a lot of ways, I have regarded my writing and my reading as being the product of some privilege. It’s not altogether traumatic to admit. I’ve considered myself fortunate to stroll beside prodigious architects of the written word, to pick their brains from time to time on … [Read more...]
Book Review: Great Plains Bison by Dan O’Brien
Great Plains Bison by Dan O'Brien / University of Nebraska Press / 2017 / xiii + 111pp / Despite its variety in form, length, and genre, most writing seeks to explain why. Now, more than ever, we find ourselves searching for answers, yearning to explain how America could reach such dire straits—politically, racially, environmentally. In response, many writers have offered … [Read more...]
