Alice In tumblr-Land (And Other Fairy Tales For A New Generation) by Tim Manley / Penguin Books / 2013 / 978-0143124795 / 272 pages "Curiouser and curiouser" was Alice's commentary on the world she … [Read more...]
Book Review – T.C. Boyle Stories II
Stories II by T.C. Boyle / Viking / Penguin Group / 2013 / 978-0670026258 / 944 pages In some form or another the short story has probably been around as long as man has had the desire and the … [Read more...]
Book Review – Erik Verhaar’s Andalusian Dogging
Andalusian Dogging by Erik Verhaar, translated by Jonathan Ellis / The Reception Game / 2013 / 17 pages In Erik Verhaar's short story, inspired by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali's 1929 film An … [Read more...]
Review – Let’s Start a Pussy Riot
Let's Start a Pussy Riot, edited by Emely Neu and Jade French / Rough Trade / June 2013 / 978-0957626201 On February 21, 2012 members of the Russian feminist performance art group/collective Pussy … [Read more...]
Book Review – What Poets Are Like: Up and Down with the Writing Life by Gary Soto
What Poets Are Like: Up and Down with the Writing Life / Gary Soto / Sasquatch Books / 978-1570618741 / 208 pages What Poets Are Like: Up and Down with the Writing Life collects sixty short essays … [Read more...]
Book Review – How Hip Was My Alley by Kenton Crowther
[Editor's note: 5/21/2014: How Hip Was My Alley has been re-titled Dad, the Times We Had: Baby Boomers in Paradise.] Kenton Crowther's previous volume, Alleycats and Beatsters, collected the … [Read more...]
Book Review – Son of Kerouac, Woodstock and God: A Memoir by James Crockett
Son of Kerouac, Woodstock and God / James Crockett / 978-148125581 / 261 pages Empty Mirror received a review copy of this book. As a young man about to embark upon a summer-long hitchhiking … [Read more...]
splake’s Magic Box
splake fishing in america. Rockford: Presa Press, 2013 only in my dreams. Springfield: Gage, 2012. Beyond Campfire Ashes. Battle Creeek: Gage, 2012. Backwater Bard Loft Musings. Fort Wayne: The … [Read more...]
Book Review – Tripping with Allah by Michael Muhammad Knight
Tripping with Allah: Islam, Drugs, and Writing by Michael Muhammad Knight Soft Skull Press / 978-1593764432 / 256 pages The idea of using drugs in order to achieve some sort of spiritual … [Read more...]
Book Review: Laura Madeline Wiseman’s poetry collection, SPRUNG
SPRUNG by Laura Madeline Wiseman / San Francisco Bay Press, 259 Granby St. Suite 200, Norfolk, VA 23517 / 2012 / 100 pages / 978-0982829578 There's fun in these irreverent poems, but also a serious … [Read more...]
Book Review – What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, by Raymond Carver
Raymond Carver's classic short story collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, was originally published in 1981 and has been the subject of some controversy over the years, with … [Read more...]
Review – Free Beer: Kicks and Truth with Jack Kerouac by Cliff Anderson
Free Beer: Kicks & Truth with Jack Kerouac, and other strong drinks is a collection of twelve stories by Cliff Anderson. Also included is Kerouac scholar Rod Anstee's 1990 interview with Anderson, … [Read more...]
Book Review – The Beauty of being Hated by Jack Leaf Willetts
Empty Mirror received a review copy of this book. Many of the poems in Jack Willetts' debut poetry collection, The Beauty of being Hated, explore the way we label and think about feelings. Here are … [Read more...]
Poetry Review – Waterloo, by J.T. Welsch
Waterloo by J.T. Welsch / Like This Press / Saddle-Stitch, 36 pages The twenty-four numbered but untitled poems, and almost as many monochrome images, of J.T. Welsch’s Waterloo begin with a wake. … [Read more...]
The Eve of Fluxus: A Fluxmemoir by Billie Maciunas
Arbiter Press, Orlando, Florida / ISBN 978-0-615-35216-9 Fluxus is a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"— often described as "intermedia," a term coined by Fluxus artist Dick … [Read more...]
Book Review – Baby Driver by Jan Kerouac
While I was being gifted a tiny grocery store carrot cake for my fifteenth birthday in a park in Connecticut, still on the road myself, Jan Kerouac passed away. It was June 5, 1996. I had no idea who … [Read more...]
Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut (Misadventures in the Counter-Culture) by Paul Krassner
New World Digital Publishing (2010) / ISBN-13: 978-0982531433 Having racked my brains in search of the perfect opening, I'll just wing it by saying that "reading Paul Krasner’s Expanded Edition … [Read more...]
Book Review – Time Adjusters & Other Stories by Bill Ectric
The modern fables that make up Bill Ectric's new collection of stories, Time Adjusters, are difficult to classify, in the best way possible. They seem a comic-book mishmash of science fiction and … [Read more...]
Tamper by Bill Ectric, reviewed by Eric D. Lehman
Tamper, the new book by Bill Ectric, frames itself as a boy named Whit's effort to comprehend his past. Did he have a prophetic dream about a bag of bones on the side of the road? Did his friend … [Read more...]
Book Review – Who was Sinclair Beiles?
Who was Sinclair Beiles? / Gary Cummiskey & Eva Kowalska, editors / Dye Hard Press / 2009 / 978-0-620-42792-0 Before I opened Dye Hard Press' new volume, its title, Who was Sinclair Beiles? was a … [Read more...]