(Spokane, Washington: Lynx House Press, 2019) Already it is mid-July, four months into a global pandemic with no end in sight. From my fifth-floor balcony, I can see Freedom Tower. The infection rate in Hoboken remains uncharacteristically low for the … Continued
(Kingston, WA, Two Sylvias Press, 2019) The clusterfuck that is the year 2020 continues, unabated, and I again am reaching for poetry. I suppose poetry is a de facto litmus test for my fractured attention. If I can read a … Continued
(New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2020) My epileptic brain is intimately related to my work as a writer. A few months after my 2011 diagnosis, I experienced my first episode of status epilepticus, and sustained a mild brain injury. I … 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
(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
(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 Italian by Anne Milano Appel (New York/London/Amsterdam: World Editions, 2019) In his recent essay, “The Contemporary American Novella and its (Dis)Contents,” John Keene makes an interesting point about publishing fiction: despite evidence that social media has contributed to … Continued
(El Paso, Texas: Veliz Books, 2019) The question of factual accuracy does not come up very often when considering poetry; this is more the controversial domain of non-fiction and memoir. But I find it is relevant when considering Tina Cane’s … Continued
Lisa Grgas: Congratulations on the publication of your first book, Animal You’ll Surely Become! How are you feeling now that it’s out in the world? Brittany Hailer: Thank you! This experience has been very surreal. I still can’t believe my … Continued
(Columbus, OH: Mad Creek Books, 2018) Prize-winning Irish essayist Chris Arthur contends that the essay is an outsider art form. A deliberate subversion of the more commercially-popular memoir, the traditional essay deep-dives into apparently quotidian details of our lives and … Continued
(New York: Scribner, 2018) Early in the summer of 2017, my husband and I made the difficult decision to unsubscribe from The New York Times. Our reading of the Sunday edition over bowls of oatmeal each Sunday had morphed into … Continued
(Diode Editions, 2017) Attempting to write a review of a truly excellent collection of poetry often feels, to me, like an effort both heroic and idiotic. The critic Coleridge, once upon a time, described prose as “words in their best … Continued
Books Discussed: Future Sex by Emily Witt (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016) Thy Neighbor’s Wife by Gay Talese (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1980). My bus broke down on the way home from work one … Continued
(New York, NY: Black Square Editions, 2015) Matvei Yankelevich’s sparse and emotionally restrained new collection, Some Worlds for Dr. Vogt, inspires deep introspection and catharsis. The book consists of a single long, lyric poem divided into forty-five suites and delineated … Continued
(Ann Arbor, MI: Dzanc Books, 2015) In his book Synchronicity (1952), Carl Jung tells the story of a young woman patient whose psychological inaccessibility proved to be both a frustration and challenge. Despite Jung’s best therapeutic efforts, this patient always … Continued
(New York, NY: Four Way Books, 2015) At some point or another, all of us will experience grief. It’s our natural response to the loss of someone or something we love dearly. At least that’s what the self-help books say, … Continued