(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
The gene named for a fruit-fly larva, I read, which when mutated sprouts bristles all over it. One of those genes you better have just right or horrible things can go wrong; e.g. you wind up with … 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
(Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press, 2019) With a quill dipped in satire and tongue lodged in his cheek, Robert Burton wrote The Anatomy of Melancholy in the early 17th century. Ostensibly a medical text, he instead opined on the philosophies … Continued
my lingerie I’d accidentally sent her a photo of myself in the new black cling-wrap meant for my lover my thumbs go loose after 2 a.m. … Continued
Translated from German by Michael Hofman (New York: Other Press, 2020) The minimal-inducing fiction of Swiss author Peter Stamm, winner of the Hölderlin Prize and short-listed for the Man Booker, has been garnering attention from English readers since his first … Continued
We live underground. More or less all the time. We eat roots, berries, tubers and insects. Occasionally rodents. Naked mole rats if we’re lucky enough to find a colony. Then we party. We even cook them if … Continued
(Cleveland, OH: Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2019) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s website is chock-a-block with opioid overdose statistics. From 1999-2017, nearly 400,000 people have died from an overdose involving opioids. There is a tendency (among … Continued
(Intuit House, 2019) Robert Nazarene is a poet on a mission. He established MARGIE, a well-respected journal, years ago to address his concern that poets are often relegated to the back seat in literary reviews. In an interview with “Winning … Continued
Ivan Medvedich was washing his silvery mustache after eating a slice of dark bread with honey when a whistle cut through the air, deepened in frequency, and sank into an explosion that shook … Continued
(Edmonds, WA: Ravenna Press, 2018) Deborah Woodard has written a little masterpiece. No Finis; Triangle Testimonies, 1911 transported me back in time to an event that had somehow, until now, eluded me: the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York … Continued
The distance from one person to the next was equal to the length of a Bridge. There. Right at the edge of it Forty-four full miles from the heart of the house to where the road hit … Continued
Translated from Spanish by Robin Myers (Phoenix, AZ: Cardboard House Press, 2018) HLC: Thank you so much, Robin, for taking the time to chat with me today, and thank you even more for translating Ezequiel Zaidenwerg’s Lyric Poetry Is Dead, … Continued
The woman has a Salt Lake stormcloud for a hairdo. She yells from her wheelchair like a man whose prayers have gone unanswered for years. There’s no one else in the hallway. The flesh of her neck … Continued
(Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 2019) Molly Reid’s The Rapture Index: A Suburban Bestiary is a stunning debut of interlacing short stories that, together, offer a warning about a human society that sees itself as disconnected from the natural world. The … Continued