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 … [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 … [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 … [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 … [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 … [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, … [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) … [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 … [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 … [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 … [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 … [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 … [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 … [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 … [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 … [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 … [Read more...]
Book Review – Enfermario by Gabriela Torres Olivares
Enfermario by Gabriela Torres Olivares, translated by Jennifer Donovan / Les Figues Press / June 2017 / 978-1-934254-65-3 / 144 pages / softcover The level of degradation to which Gabriela Torres … [Read more...]
Shock of the New: Jennifer L. Lieberman, Power Lines, and Science and Technology Studies
When I was young, I found the idea that there were people who in the world who devoted their lives to writing about literature — about Shakespeare, say — both fascinating and mystifying. Readers had … [Read more...]
“No, this was all first person”: Revisiting Jorie Graham’s Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts
Jorie Graham’s first poetry collection, Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts (1980) has a way of receding from memory despite its potency due, in part, to the great success of her second collection. Her … [Read more...]
Giving the Stars Their Right Names: Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith, reviewed
Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith / Graywolf Press / 96 pages / 978-1555977856 / September 5, 2017 Not all poems are written and speak out in defense of something, not many books reach up and over … [Read more...]
