(Wilkes-Barre, PA: Etruscan Press, 2014) The expert hunter kills quickly, precisely. With enough training, the hunter can cause death to his prey in ten seconds or less. These wounds are called “quick kills,” and are thought to be a form … Continued
(Cleveland, OH: Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2014) More and more contemporary American poems, particularly those of younger poets, seem preoccupied with the nexus of family, self, and identity. While these topics are not inherently flawed or unworthy of exploring, … Continued
(New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014) One of the great benefits of a close and long lasting friendship is banking on time served. There is no need for polite “how’s the weather” chitchat. When observed by a stranger, … Continued
Translated from the Japanese by Paul McCarthy (Urbana-Champaign, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 2009) Sometimes it’s only a whisper. Didn’t we just see that man? Weren’t they just talking about a missed train? And veins on a rock…where else did we just … Continued
(The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Mood, Masochism, and Murder. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2009) In my husband’s family if you’re reading a book and put it down on the coffee table to go get a snack, your book is fair game. … Continued
(Kalamazoo, MI: New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2014) Imagine lying under the covers in the chilling winter dusk, feeling blissful in the comfort, yet, perhaps also finding it disconcerting to think of the freezing temperatures outside and how cold wreaks … Continued
(On Immunity: An Inoculation. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2014) In July of 2014, employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discovered, in a cold storage facility unused for decades, several vials that contained living strains of the smallpox virus. When confronted with the … Continued
Translated from the Spanish by Margaret B. Carson (Rochester, NY: Open Letter Books, 2011) Everyone knows that a good walk through the park is an enriching, calming experience perfect for airing some of that figurative dirty laundry. It’s a way … Continued
Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa (New York, NY: Other Press, 2014) It’s peculiar how ghosts will bump into you when you are least expecting them to. How they’ll blindside you and drag you back to places long … Continued
Translated from the French by Christine Schwartz Hartley & Anna Moschovakis (Brooklyn, NY: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2013) Marcelle Sauvageot’s Commentary begins with a woman who begs herself for words. She can sense that her lover has pulled away. The anticipation … Continued
(New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2014) The town where I live sits on the flanks of the Colorado Mountains, at the collective mouth of several rocky canyons. Last fall, eight days of steady rain filled the narrow streams that thread those … Continued
(New York, NY: Riverhead, 2014) Friendswood, the lyrical new novel by National Book Award Finalist René Steinke, is the kind of 300-plus-page book that devours you in a couple of afternoons. The prose is nimble but sure-footed, the narrative suspenseful, … Continued
(Oxford, OH: Miami University Press, 2011) It seems unlikely that a novella with an opening scene involving anonymous sexual encounters between men would turn out to be a fluid, poetic internal monologue on some of the weightiest universal issues out … Continued
One road leads to another. (A few, it is true, lead only to the sea, but mostly one road leads to another.) I met the poet H.L. Hix through the poet David Mason. Or, rather, I have never actually met … Continued
(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2014) From “big jellyfish, All grown-assed” to “rain-laden / Lilacs,” Alex Lemon’s newest poetry collection, The Wish Book, is filled with everything. In a way, this reminds me of Dara Wier’s newest collection, You Good Thing, … Continued
(Shelter Island, NY: Black Cat, 2014) Rape culture is a term, somewhat overused lately, that describes the normalization of sexual assault in a society. Break it down, and you have two charged, weighty words that mean vastly different things to … Continued
Translation by Eric Abrahamsen. (San Francisco, CA: Two Lines Press, 2014) I was a taciturn and grubby child, a pint-sized pessimist that preferred the company of animals and solitude to that of my family and friends. If not on horseback, I ran everywhere … Continued
(Cambridge, MA: Alice James Books, 2014) “I imagine a star. A clove bullet/ ripping through me.” This is one way to render the feeling—a massive nuclear reaction; an intensity of flavor that parts flesh—of losing yourself in Sally Wen Mao’s … Continued
When I first started Dana Spiotta’s new novel, Stone Arabia, it called to mind Don DeLillo’s Great Jones Street, another exploration of rock and roll—its fascination, its inarticulate articulateness, its enigmatic pull. That’s how I was reading it for the … Continued
Books Discussed: Bonnie J. Rough’s Carrier: Untangling the Danger in My DNA (Counterpoint Press, 2010); Roland Barthes’s Mourning Diary, translated and with an Afterword by Richard Howard (Hill and Wang, 2012); Roger Rosenblatt’s, Making Toast (Ecco, 2010) It was six months, almost to the day, from … Continued