(North Adams, MA: Tupelo Press, 2020) Not unlike the shimmering ghazals of Agha Shahid Ali, the poems by Adeeba Shahid Talukder embody a “leaping” quality, an ability to shift surprisingly from one keen observation to another, always landing on her … Continued
(Bethesda, MD: Alan Squire Publishing) Grace Cavalieri is a living legend you may have never heard of. Other Voices, Other Lives: A Grace Cavalieri Collection is an old fashioned “reader” of her literary works that serves as a fine introduction … Continued
(Seattle, WA: Entre Ríos Books, 2020) Orange, by E. Briskin, is a collection of segmented prose about the death of a grieving narrator’s dog. Along with the jolting theme, the form that Orange takes is just as peculiar. The stream-of-conscious … Continued
(Encino, CA: Delphinium 2020) Joe Caldwell, a playwright, novelist, and script-writer for the soap opera Dark Shadows has published his first memoir, In the Shadow of the Bridge with Delphinium (2020). Because Caldwell’s roots are in the theater, it’s no … Continued
Translated from Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles (New York: World Editions, 2020) The Greek goddess Athena, born directly of a father into adulthood and having no mother, has never been a compromised figure displaying a lack of resolve or shying away … Continued
(New York: C&R Press, 2019) Two Californias by Robert Glick is this accomplished writer’s first collection. It gives me some real hope and happiness that Gen X may be finally ready for our winning moments. This book is certainly one. … Continued
Updike, Redux It’s 1993. John Michael Cummings, an award-winning writer, is chasing John Updike down the main drag of Ipswich, Massachusetts. Cummings is clutching his latest manuscript, and he wants the celebrated novelist to read it. Updike, 60 years old … Continued
(New York: Catapult Books, 2020) “I ask myself: how to account for the impression of splendor?” de Kretser writes at the outset of her thoughtful tribute to Shirley Hazzard, acknowledging how it is famously difficult to capture the mystical in … Continued
(New York: Sonder Press, 2019) In its fifth year, The Best Small Fictions anthology is more robust than ever, representing authors across twenty-six nations and six continents. The volume – featuring over one-hundred flash fiction pieces – highlights ten stories … Continued
(Frankfort, KY: Broadstone Books, 2019) After thirteen years living in Portland, Oregon, my husband and I returned to New Jersey, our home state, so I could continue my career in clinical research at New York University. In three months, we … Continued
(Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2020) Flourish, Dora Malech’s fourth collection of poetry, is divided into four sections, each introduced by a line of poetry by four different poets (Rita Dove, Saeed Jones, Carolyn Kizer, and Kay Ryan) that … Continued
WORKS DISCUSSED: Actress (New York, W.W. Norton, 2020) The Forgotten Waltz (New York, W.W. Norton, 2011) The Green Road (New York, W.W. Norton, 2016) The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (New York, Grove Atlantic, 2002) What Are You Like (New York, … Continued
(South Bend, IN: Wolfson Press, 2020) When writing her slim novel, The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers explained to her husband in a letter her obsessive focus on revision: the novel was “one of those works that the least … Continued
(Edmonds, WA: Ravenna Press, 2019) Joan Fiset’s newest collection, How It Was with Scotland (2019, Ravenna Press), is a startling, vivid chapbook comprised of fragmentary poems and surreal images. Each poem is paired with visual art by Noah Saterstrom, and … Continued
Translated from Chinese by Fiona Sze-Lorrain (Storrs, CT: World Poetry Books, 2019) My Mountain Country, a collection of poems from three of her books in the original Chinese, tempts the Western reader to identify a bucolic romanticism in her work … Continued
After being poked & blood tested by the specialist who spoke Hmmm In several dialects including an obscure amputee sign language I eavesdropped On her conferring with beleaguered foreign colleagues by the soda machine, Whispering vowel-heavy polysyllabic antiseptic gibberish; apparently, … Continued
(New York: World Editions, 2019) Full disclosure: if you’re an MFA grad, like me, whose novelist credentials involve the unfortunate words self-published, you have to be demure, especially in certain artsy epicenters — Austin, Brooklyn, San Francisco, Reykjavik — if … Continued
Translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel (New York: Other Press, 2020) During the Holocaust, Denmark was the only European country that rallied around its Jewish population to save nearly every Danish Jew. Almost overnight, the resistance organized a rescue mission. … Continued
Because of the number and severity of the stab wounds and the disorder of his room, which indicated a violent struggle, the death of Horton Smith Juaire Jr. was at first listed as a homicide. It was not until after … Continued
(Dallas, TX: Deep Vellum Publishing, 2019) Deep Vellum — known for publishing award-winning translations out of its eponymous bookstore in the historically neglected neighborhood of Deep Ellum in Dallas, Texas — has come out with its first ever chapbooks of … Continued
“Redwoods,” Hammond said, “hold this earth together. They never lose the dirt.” He stomped. “Roots this wide—” He did a full arm wingspan from where he sat in the center of the living room in his big easy, meaning to … Continued
translated from French and Arabic by Susanna Lang and Kay Keikkinen A woman walks by hands in her pockets once she has passed out of sight I’ll forget your last words I no longer know if … Continued
(Ann Arbor, MI: Dzanc Books, 2019) There’s rarely a time when one can write about a novel dealing with a mass shooting in the United States without one or more real-life incidents freshly in the news. The media narrative starts … Continued
He isn’t giving me any answers. His book of scripture is open on the floor. If I lean in close, with my lips next to his ear, He whispers back verse after verse. It’s no use … Continued
It was the year we went to Iceland. Not everyone, mind you. A few were happy with what was going on at home. Who needed a passport when you could have a gun? We went to Iceland because it … Continued
(Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2019) Kelly Cherry writes with a cosmic consciousness in her newest poetry collection, Observing the Invisible (Louisiana State University Press, 2019). Divided into four sections, these poems explore space, nature, science, philosophy, music, … Continued
When we first started talking about this issue’s theme, I compiled in my mind a cluster of associations and ideas that emerged from granary: plenitude, agriculture, resources, food, slow steady movement. A series of images: red barns, tall silos, highways … Continued
Translated from Armenian by Peter Balakian and Aram Arkun (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018) In the late eighties, I was teaching at the Uskudar Girls School in Istanbul, and I went on a trip with my partner at … Continued
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020) If fiction exposes truth through the imaginary, Garth Greenwell’s novel Cleanness is a reimagining that splays open his characters’ secret selves, denudes them of pretense to tell hard, beautiful, human truths. … Continued
Ruth Danon (Word Has It) and Cassandra Cleghorn (Four Weathercocks) interviewed one another about their books, slow writing, visceral abstractions, outfoxing oneself, bird-ing and word-ing, and finding home in the “claw and scramble” of making a poem. In the process … Continued