(Tolleson, AZ: Tolsun Books, 2019) In her collection of unusually powerful utterances, Elizabeth Quiñones-Zaldaña, with only her first book, has done more for my hopes for religious feeling — a poetry of faith — than any other modern poet. The … Continued
(London: Holland Park Press, 2019) Life happens and then I write about it. It’s what essayists and memoirists do. We take real life stories and put them down on paper so others can read about them. However, writing non-fiction is … Continued
(North Adams, MA: Tupelo Press, 2019) Native Voices: Indigenous American Poetry, Craft and Conversations should be on your shelf, your reading list, or your syllabus — or even all three. Edited by poet-scholars CMarie Fuhrman and Dean Rader and published … Continued
(Winston-Salem, NC: Mastodon Publishing, 2018) In the Boston of Ron MacLean’s new novel, Headlong, a janitor’s strike lights the fuse that sets off rallies, protests, and political unrest. These events come to a boil during a heatwave, suggesting we are … Continued
(Oxford, OH: Miami University Press, 2019) For a familial investigation of self-discovery preferring to simmer instead of boil, Paul Skenazy’s Temper CA, winner of the Miami University Press 2018 Novella Prize, conspicuously decides to extract its choice moments not through … Continued
Hatched from the wet egg of a sculptor’s eye a quarter century ago, it grips its squat stump, wings outstretched as if to dry. Its bones are wires, its plumage ragged strips of pages torn from my … Continued
(Kenmore, NY: BlazeVOX [books], 2019) If the chronicle of the political spectacle of the past several years has had the feel and texture of running one’s fingers over a rough, opaque blanket covering what is categorized as hard reality — … Continued
Though it happened. When I threw the plant across the kitchen counter, I never meant to crush its unstraight stalk crude with green sureness, cracking pottery chips across the tile floor. I meant to scoop handfuls of … Continued
(Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2019) Sharply contemporary and certainly urbane, Rebecca Hazelton’s third collection of poems, Gloss, balances a candor with, as one might expect from a collection named for a quality of appearances, an appreciation for the … Continued
Pearl was limp with boredom and Taiwan’s humidity. That morning Pearl’s mother, Wen Hua, told her that visitors were coming to the house and ordered her to wear one of the playsuits she’d bought … Continued
(Oxford, OH: Miami University Press, 2018) In the spring of 2011, I underwent a tympanoplasty to reconstruct my left eardrum and the bones of my middle ear. I had damaged the ear about a decade earlier while water skiing on … Continued
Translated from French by S.C. Delaney and Agnès Potier First it was two false incisors falling on his plate. In the past he might have laughed, written some pages, maybe a decent story he’d have put away with some … Continued
(Florham Park, NJ: Serving House Books, 2019) I read incessantly. This morning, I was at a department meeting at work and my supervisor commented that she always sees me with a book — a different one every week. I read … Continued
The Husband & I stand next to each other: not speaking, sometimes speaking. See? Asks the photograph. A closeness or almostness? The photograph is meaningless except insofar as it is a record of us in a place at a moment … Continued
(Glenview, IL: Glass Lyre Press, 2019) If you have enjoyed the works of Mary Quade, either Guide to Native Beasts or Local Extinctions, or are enamored with molecular biologist and field ecologist Katherine Larson’s poetry collection, Radial Symmetry, Mary Peelen’s … Continued
1. Is This Canada? There are aliens living on top of Toronto’s CN Tower. They are attempting to send you a message. They want to spy on earthlings before they make their final invasion and start a full-out … Continued
(Winston-Salem, NC: Mastodon Publishing, 2018) Katie Rogin is an award-winning writer with a diverse oeuvre. She has written for both television and film, including ABC’s One Life to Live, and a short film In A Blue Mood, which she also … Continued
Translated by Robert Hedin and Dag T. Straumsvåg I’m prisoner 1964, my birth year. My cell number is the same as my phone number. I often sit in front of my cell door looking for cracks in the … Continued
(New York: Other Press, 2019) When asked about the inspirations for her characters, author of The Hundred Wells of Salaga, Ayesha Harruna Attah, shares that her “goal was to write fully rounded people…because even the kindest people are capable of … Continued
Everything she owned fit into a yellow cab. A year living on Avenue B and all she’d accumulated were calluses from barefoot turns, the bottom of each toe hardened and ridged like the edge of an almond. It … Continued
In 2013 an editor of a Canadian journal asked me to review a new Dalkey title written by S.D. Chrostowska. Perhaps he figured that I might appreciate the experimentalism behind Permission: A Novel (2013). “We run once again down that … Continued
Against a xeroxed purity I’m learning to say My pleasure Pouring one out For narrative unity Watching soap operas On a stained futon I’m learning about free will How little I have Nature produces automata Opening an email … Continued
I knew someone Who went broke throwing clam bakes A generous backfire There are wet dreams It aches to wake from Like unlearning the axiom that To love anyone You have to love everyone Watching my love rescue … Continued
Making out inside a Richard Serra Strikes me as the right way to take in art Like embracing an echo The moment examined mercurifies An eviscerated longing I feel like a voyeur Eating warm cheese at the gallery … Continued
nunca sé por dónde empezar, así que decido hacerlo al comerme una fresa incontable la cantidad de semillas can you say I’m of two minds? yo diría que tengo ideas encontradas lo cual abre dos posibilidades: que se encuentren como … Continued
(Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2019) In Phantom Signs, Philip Brady writes about poetry and death, basketball and music, academia, Achebe, Adorno, Agamemnon, and another two-hundred or so names that he goes on to list in alphabetical order, but … Continued
We are living a feverish moment. Politics are heated to the point of being carnivalesque. The planet is overheated and threatens to extinguish. Tempers are high, mores are in a freefall of correction. Education is on one end a riot … Continued
(Yorkshire, UK: Leaky Boot Press, 2019) Elizabeth A. I. Powell’s debut novel, Concerning the Holy Ghost’s Interpretation of J. Crew Catalogues, is a slow-paced, image-driven story focused on the lives of J. Crew catalogue models and their photographer, Wolfgang Ackerbloom. … Continued
(Wilkes-Barre, PA: Etruscan Press, 2019) In this kaleidoscopic pastiche of a novel, Lynn Lurie creates a world full of grief, confusion, pain, and difficult but enduring love. The unnamed narrator is the mother of a boy who struggles with many … Continued
(Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2019) We Lived Happily during the War And when they bombed other people’s houses, we protested but not enough, we opposed them but not enough. I was in my bed, around my bed America was falling: … Continued
