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Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan, reviewed by Eric D. Lehman

Eric D. Lehman

Trout Fishing in America - Richard Brautigan

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

Marc Olmsted

Dime Bag: Stories 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...]

Book Review – The Education of a Young Poet by David Biespiel

Jonathan Austin Peacock

David Biespiel - The Education of a Young Poet

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

Cheyenne Marco

Great Plains Bison -- 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

Michael Kirby

Enfermario by Gabriela Torres Olivares, translated by Jennifer Donovan

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

Michael Lindgren

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...]

Book Review – Michel Leiris’ Nights as Day, Days as Night

Denise Enck

Nights as Day, Days as Nights - Spurl Editions

Nights as Day, Days as Night by Michel Leiris / Spurl Editions / 196 pages / $17.50 / Translated by Richard Sieburth, with a foreword by Maurice Blanchot Spurl Editions has republished this … [Read more...]

Book Review — First Thought: Conversations with Allen Ginsberg

Marc Olmsted

Conversations with Allen Ginsberg

First Thought: Conversations with Allen Ginsberg edited by Michael Schumacher / University of Minnesota Press / March 17, 2017 / 978-0816699179 Michael Schumacher is one of the major scholars of … [Read more...]

Book review – Life is Unbearable: Grzegorz Wróblewski’s Zero Visibility

Marcus Slease

Zero Visibility by Grzegorz Wróblewski

Zero Visibility by Grzegorz Wróblewski (trans. Piotr Gwiazda) / Phoneme Media / 136 pages / ISBN: 978-1944700126 We are constantly swamped with all sorts of products (books, music, movies, the … [Read more...]

Book Review: 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster

John Burns

4321 Auster

4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster / Henry Holt and Co. / 2017 / 880 pages / ISBN: 978-1627794466 It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Paul Auster – a writer known for brevity and concision, at least most of … [Read more...]

Heroin Haikus by William Wantling, reviewed

Denise Enck

William Wantling Heroin Haikus

Heroin Haikus by William Wantling / Tangerine Press / 2016 / 20 pages / 978-1-910691-18-2 William Wantling's Heroin Haikus, out of print for fifty years, was recently published in a new edition by … [Read more...]

Book Review – In Whatever Light Left to Us by Jessica Jacobs

Carolyn Ogburn

In Whatever Light Left to Us by Jessica Jacobs, poetry

In Whatever Light Left To Us by Jessica Jacobs / Sibling Rivalry Press / ISBN: 978-1-943977-19-2 / 44 pages / 2016 Jessica Jacob’s In Whatever Light Left to Us, is a chapbook infused with the … [Read more...]

Book review: Kara Vernor’s Because I Wanted to Write You a Pop Song

Carlotta Eden

Kara Vernor - Because I Wanted to Write You a Pop Song

Because I Wanted to Write You a Pop Song by Kara Vernor / Split Lip Press / 75 pages / ISBN: 978-0-9909035-7-4 "… this is what boys did to girls" My dad used to say there were two ways to enter … [Read more...]

Book Review – Generation Hex: David Noone’s novella, Saint of the City

Christopher Brownsword

Saint of the City - David Noone

Saint of the City by David Noone, introduced by Cathi Unsworth / Murder Slim Press / March 2017 Lunging forwards with a series of rapid-fire blows to the gut masquerading as chapters, Saint of … [Read more...]

Steve Aylett is Creative People’s Drug of Choice

Bill Ectric

Steve Aylett: A Critical Anthology book review

The following is a modified version of the first essay in Steve Aylett: A Critical Anthology (Sein und Werden, 2016), in which various authors discuss and analyze the work of Steve Aylett. The … [Read more...]

Book review – Modern Once Again: Whit Griffin’s We Who Saw Everything

Christopher Rizzo

We Who Saw Everything by Whit Griffin

We Who Saw Everything by Whit Griffin / The Cutural Society / 978-0-988-71926-2 /2015 It’s said that the Roman statesman Cassiodorus was the first writer to regularly use “modern” in the … [Read more...]

Sonosyntactics by Paul Dutton: A Book Review

Michael Lindgren

Sonosyntactics: Selected and New Poetry of Paul Dutton

Sonosyntactics by Paul Dutton / Wilfrid Laurier University Press / $18.99 / 2015 Sonosyntactics: Selected and New Poetry of Paul Dutton serves as a tidy overview of the work of an unheralded poet … [Read more...]

Book Review – Swimmer in the Secret Sea by William Kotzwinkle

Eric D. Lehman

Swimmer in the Secret Sea - William Kotzwinkle

Known more for fantasy and children’s books, William Kotzwinkle made his name with novelizations of hit movies like E.T: The Extra Terrestrial. His forays into more serious fiction are often ignored, … [Read more...]

Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Eric D. Lehman

Catcher in the Rye

Often, reading books at different times in one’s life produces different results and different interpretations. But perhaps no book makes a clearer demarcation between adolescence and adulthood than … [Read more...]

Book review — Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel

Eric D. Lehman

Zen in the Art of Archery - Eugen Herrigel

I have read so many books about the practice of Zen Buddhism that it is difficult to choose a particular one that influenced me. And in fact I read Eugen Herrigel’s thin volume after I had read four … [Read more...]

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Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

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  • On Waiting
  • Seeing Las Meninas in Madrid, 1994
  • Visual poems from 23 Bodhisattvas by Chris Stephenson
  • Historical Punctum: Reading Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia and Native Guard Through the Lens of Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida
  • Panic In The Rear-View Mirror: Exploring The Work of Richard Siken and Ann Gale
  • “Art has side effects,” I said.

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