Books Discussed: Mean Free Path by Ben Lerner (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2010) Salvage by Kristy Bowen (New York: Black Lawrence Press, 2016) What Weaponry by Elizabeth J. Colen (New York: Black Lawrence Press, 2016) I was initially … Continued
Rows of pines, planted years ago – so many, were you to count them on your fingers, you would give up past a hundred span; and pain doesn’t yet know about it, while lording over all other feeling. Must explain … Continued
Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith (Rochester, NY: Open Letter Books, 2016) Reading Bae Suah’s novel, A Greater Music, is much like the experience of listening to the concertos of Beethoven. I listened to Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2, … Continued
I have some friends with whom we discuss our parents. We say that our mothers are unhappy or overbearing, and that our fathers are infuriatingly punctual or unkind to our mothers. From these assessments, we make evaluations about ourselves, about … Continued
(Norman, OK: Texture Press, 2015) If real life is stranger than fiction, Nathan Leslie’s new collection Root and Shoot is the splendid exception. Vivid, bizarre, and hilarious, each individual piece of short fiction forms a mosaic of the everyday and … Continued
Sing your song sudden, let it be a car door hitting the breastbone, small tear in the pink of an eye. Who hears it when you keep its hum at the base of your throat? I do. I am the … Continued
(Ann Arbor, MI: Dzanc Books, 2016) It’s not every book of short stories that feels like a book of poetry. Equally, it’s not every book that reads like a film. Enter John Domini’s Movieola!, a slim collection for those who … Continued
People say your life flashes before your eyes right before you die, but it also happens when you find out you’re pregnant. And unemployed. Yesterday I got news of one life-changing event right after news of the other. First, Bethany … Continued
Translated from the Polish by Stephanie Kraft (Philadelphia, PA: Paul Dry Books, 2016) “Only a man who is suffocating knows what an open window is,” Istvan Terey, a Hungarian poet serving as a diplomat in India, tells his Australian lover Margit … Continued
after Edward Hirsch This is a song to be sung by a soloist wearing a paper crown, for the speechless, the missing, the kidnapped at dawn, the ones pole-vaulting the border but never hitting the ground. This song is but … Continued
(Portland, OR: University of Hell Press, 2016) The funeral director took my hand between her palms, looked into my eyes, and murmured I’m sorry for your loss. There were papers to sign, urns to peruse. Did we like a traditional … Continued
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015) I recently visited Nevada’s National Atomic Testing Museum. I expected to be taken back by certain images – the apocalyptic mushroom clouds and obliterated cities – but something else remained with me, too. I … Continued
Scruffy little five inch plastic horse He didn’t much like it in the store But only $1.99 & it might fit in his toy pickup… At home among shiny race cars and red siren fire trucks Suddenly he starts talking … Continued
Translated from the German by Jen Calleja (New York, NY: Other Press, 2017) I am a “tobacco chipper.” Two days ago, I had never heard the term, but according to Gregor Hens in Nicotine, it is someone who can smoke … Continued
Don’t fence me in, said my student just as the foil perforated his safety vest, slid straight around his vital organs, manufacturer’s defect, said the coach, fence denying blame. And haven’t the animals begun to watch, crows flapping up as … Continued
Am I Here Alone? Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live (New York, NY: Catapult, 2016) In his intriguing new book Am I Alone Here? Peter Orner plays with the difference between reading and writing as therapeutic human … Continued
Translated from the Catalan by Mary Ann Newman (Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 2015) In 1932, revered Catalan novelist Josep Maria de Sagarra put it upon himself to produce the great Barcelonan novel. Determined to produce a raw and gritty representation of … Continued
In a year of throwing voices into the hot wind Filling the road with blue and red sawhorses Blocking the street in a year of knowing the correct Word or where places were as I imagined them Growing dark like … Continued
Good Girls Marry Doctors: South Asian American Daughters on Obedience and Rebellion (San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books, 2016) I sat captivated in a featureless lecture hall, absorbing the compelling autobiographical events that shape Good Girls Marry Doctors: South Asian American … Continued
(New York, NY: Black Lawrence Press, 2016) I’ll confess, when Renée Ashley’s sixth full-length collection of poetry arrived in the mail, the title, The View from the Body, gave me pause. Body, body, body. More than enough poets, I thought, … Continued
All alone In the kitchen With the kids gone The wife gone The leaves gone The way walls disappear Into meadows The way knives Disappear Into marigolds Sunshine Into debris Of the spirit I’m all alone In the Kitchen I … Continued
Some dark nights I drift out my window, Where the streets are long strings of red and white pearls, Each one humming. And sometimes I’ll get as far as the outskirts. There the hills clench the city Like a burning … Continued
(Evansville, IN: Southern Indiana Review Press, 2015) As a writer, a crucial, early lesson often taught is to learn how to show an experience with craft and content, rather than tell of what happened. That was one of my first … Continued
The first person I sang for like this was Sarah. She was twenty-six. Four months after her oncologist cut a sarcoma from her arm and gave her the all-clear; four months during which she planned her wedding and imagined her … Continued
(Amazon Kindle Singles, 2016) Vez and Rake aren’t sorry to be deployed to the desert. This is what they trained for; this is what they’re meant to be doing. But when a mission gone south and ends with Rake picking … Continued
1 I’m driving on one of those dark, peculiar backroads in upstate New York, coming back from a land-development community meeting, when I hit something in the road. The car skids a little, after the thump, and as I screech … Continued
the background needs revising you can return to your hometown —Bei Dao So long as there’s a hometown you’re not free —Ko Un When you say hometown, you mean the place where an old girl friend I hurt in … Continued
Books Discussed: The Sad Epistles by Emma Bolden (Chicago, IL: Dancing Girl Press, 2008) Desiring Map by Megan Kaminski (Atlanta, GA: Coconut Books, 2013) In much of contemporary experimental writing, there is a tendency to valorize fragmented approaches to the … Continued
Translated from Spanish by Curtis Bauer. Fernando and Alicia meet, like each other, and begin to date. She lives alone, he with his parents. One afternoon she asks him to walk home with her, because she needs to change clothes … Continued
I watched a woman fix a roadside shrine just before the rain came. Blue and purple plastic flowers thinned by summer sun and bent weird by winter. Coat hangers built into a cross. Nailed into a swamp oak. Ya know. … Continued