The Creation
It was a dream of bodies It was a dream of your body unlocking itself from newly risen fields It was a dream of you materializing from the brown limbs of … Continued
It was a dream of bodies It was a dream of your body unlocking itself from newly risen fields It was a dream of you materializing from the brown limbs of … Continued
Translated from Turkish by Nermin Menemencioğlu The woman must have been out washing A bundle on her arm, her rough hands chapped with soda Like all Jewish women of her age She wore a faded black velvet coat … Continued
FOR ARCHIBALD J. MOTLEY’S BROWN GIRL She’d walk up and take the sandwich from your hand to feed her kids She’d wear red ’round her rear on Sunday to Sunday service Her lips were painted red Her nails … Continued
translated from Chinese by Fiona Sze-Lorrain Rustling in the grass. A little squirrel hauls a large fluffy tail among twigs and branches an instantaneous flash. Empty mountain. Birds singing. Flapping feathers so minute, yet ubiquitous . . . … Continued
TRANSLATED BY ROBIN MYERS (Rochester, NY: Open Letter Books, 2020) “My pen is also a gun that wants to blow up the monovocal, monotonous realities imposed on us by capitalism. I don’t think it’s worth living a life like that; … Continued
(North Adams, MA: Tupelo Press, 2021) I was first introduced to the brilliance of Robert Wrigley’s work through his poem “Ode to My Boots,” from Anatomy of Melancholy and Other Poems. In this poem, Wrigley’s narrator draws on a long … Continued
(New York: Persea Books, 2020) By middle-age, youth is a private letter tucked inside an envelope. No matter what emotions it stirs by looking back over it, the very fact of its presence makes one thing clear: We each … Continued
(North Adams, MA: Tupelo Press, 2021) In her stunning debut collection, Music for Exile, Nehassaiu deGannes acts as a symphonic or choral conductor, deftly incorporating a multitude of voices, themes, and structures from Kamau Brathwaite, Jay Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, the … Continued
Books discussed in this review: The Language of My Captor (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2017) Sometimes I Never Suffered (New York: FSG, 2020) The Gilded Auction Block (New York: FSG, 2019) As a first-generation white American, I have … Continued
(Wyncote, PA: Split/Lip Press, 2021) A glance down the table of contents of The Part That Burns: A Memoir in Fragments, by Jeannine Ouellette, immediately shows the reader how Ouellette has chosen to organize her work. Here we see … Continued
(Winston-Salem, NC: C&R Press) “Why would anyone find the train schedules interesting when it is possible to learn about astronomy.” – Kristina Marie Darling, “Orpheus Really Loved that Girl,” Dark Horse Kristina Marie Darling’s collection In the Room of Persistent … Continued
(Colombus, OH: Two Dollar Radio, 2021) I have read the book to beat this year. Melanie Finn’s latest novel, The Hare, follows Rosie Monroe, an art school student living on her own in New York City in the 1980s, as … Continued
(Edmonds, WA: Ravenna Press, 2021) In Lord Baltimore, poet Peter Ramos offers a dark vision of mid-to-late twentieth-century America as a lonely urban and sub-urban, post-industrial wasteland. The poems, named for Cecil Calvert, the 18th-century patron saint of Baltimore, teem … Continued
The way she wears her sweater is so Sunday. If her parents were here she’d say why don’t you go watch Dancing With the Stars. It is every generation’s job to feel deprived. If she had kids she’s scared of … Continued
Two Californias (C&R Press. 2019) Sunsphere (BlazeVOX. 2019) Andrew Farkas and Robert Glick, both fiction writers, speak here about their books, Two Californias and Sunsphere. Through a conversation that took place over e-mail, the two discuss non-traditional narratives, hyper-objects, as well as formal … Continued
(North Adams, MA: Tupelo Press, 2020) “How young were my boys when I moved them to a town, actually not even a town but a hamlet situated inside a town that would, within months, become the site of the largest … Continued
Yvette and I were in bed, watching through a gap in the curtains as my neighbor, Lou Spellman, stood at his mailbox and cried. The corner of the box was pressing into his gut, and he took a handkerchief from … Continued
(Denver, CO: Clash Books. 2019) In an age where sprays and sprays of digital and streaming media envelop us in bright blooms and the rich scents of reality, poetry may not serve social change as much as it desires to … Continued
(San Francisco, CA: Outpost19. 2020) Imagine the world going silent. All cars and buses, trains, subways, and planes stop in their lanes and patterns. Tiny particles drifting quietly through the air slowly and then pause, waiting. Even you are still. … Continued
(Edmonds, WA: Ravenna Press 2021) Raven with huge paws and a brown snout. Boots with an active tongue and a fluffy tail. Bird the husky mix who “sings.” Spiff. Doodle. Elle. These are but a few of the delightful dog … Continued
(North Adams, MA: Tupelo Press/Leapfolio 2020) In a slim paperbound volume, which sports a pale blossom on its rain-colored cover — reminiscent of Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” — poet and oncologist Matthew Mumber’s thirty-nine poems offer a … Continued
(Kenmore, NY: BlazeVOX Books 2019) Wade Stevenson’s Going Head to Head is a book-length poem that takes the head as its central theme and uses it as a way to explore various states of being — from the metaphysical to … Continued
(Cleveland, OH: Cleveland State Poetry Center 2020) Lauren Shapiro’s second poetry collection, Arena, deals with a father’s attempted suicide and its traumatic aftereffects. These poems move back and forth between lyric and prose modes as the speaker seeks to bring … Continued
(McLean, IL: Dalkey Archive Press 2020) Toward. The word looks odd by itself, untethered from what’s behind, not yet having arrived at that which lies ahead. This untethered state is often mistakenly attributed to poetry and poets — it’s accompanied … Continued
(Seattle, WA: Red Mountain Press, 2020) Donald Platt’s new poetry collection One Illuminated Letter of Being is a tribute to his dead mother Martha, whom he desperately wants back. Closure is a myth; we are unending, ever-evolving, always reshaping the … Continued
In the summer of 2020, Clifford Garstang, author of House of the Ancients and Other Stories, and Terese Svoboda, author of Great American Desert, interviewed each other via email about their most recent releases of story collections. This is a transcript … Continued
(Los Angeles, CA: Unnamed Press 2020) Dark. Delicious. Smart and deeply literary. A novel of sublime prose and piquant wit, A Certain Hunger, by Chelsea G. Summers, is part psychological thriller, part unapologetic tale of sexual desire from a woman … Continued
Translated from Swedish by Nichola Smalley (Sheffield, UK: And Other Stories, 2020) Early in Swedish author Andrzej Tichý’s fifth novel, Wretchedness, this reader had the sinking feeling that the narrative would be a latter-day, sentimental retrospective on drug addiction and … Continued
Translated from French by Adriana Hunter (New York: Other Press, 2020) Written in poetic, gorgeously sparse prose, Pauline Delabroy-Allard’s debut novel, They Say Sarah, captures the intensity of two women’s violent and obsessive love affair. Structured in two parts, … Continued
Weave a new tale for the clever queen. By day she weaves the shroud; by night she … Continued
Ernest Hemingway met F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald in 1925 when they were all living in Paris. The Great Gatsby had just come out and, according to Fitzgerald, “was not selling well but had very fine reviews.” Hemingway pursued the … Continued
That night, as Sam slept, Daisy snuck out and drove out of town, the sky clear, the moon half-empty. Ahead of her the tail lights of a semi-trailer. She watched for the gleam of green deer eyes on … Continued
Translated from Catalan Maruxa Relaño and Martha Tennent (Rochester, NY: Open Letter, 2020) The rich have no concern for the poor. Or rather they live in their gilded mansions, eating expensive food, buying designer clothes, and traveling to exotic places, while … Continued
(Shropshire, EN: Platypus Press, 2020) I discovered Joseph Fasano, author of the new novel The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing, as a poet. A few years back, I read some of his verse, and more recently I heard him … Continued
When I mention a crush I have on some boy I’ll forget in three weeks’ time or never, call it love, Scuba, my closest friend, rolls his eyes, shoots back Did you pee on him so he’s marked as … Continued
(Sefton Park, Australia: Everytime Press) She had inky black skin with matching pupils that seemed to take up her entire eye. Her voice – like the devil. Her walk – unbalanced. Like her body it felt foreign. Clearly, to Davon … Continued
Holding my death in his mouth I’m reminded of a cat Snapping a canary up All blood and blonde feathers and grey fur Tiny beak and talons no match against that Merciless beast Poor creature I have arrived here And … Continued
(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
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 … Continued
you border crosser in this simulation you constantly slip and call one border by the other’s name the names aren’t straight inside of you and you conflate one with two because you still yearn for another border … Continued
You would have told yourself as your mother sat in the dentist’s chair, had you known who Wittgenstein was then, “I have to imagine pain which I do not feel on the model of the pain which I do … Continued
I haunt you because I love you. You are constantly surprised by this. I am made of papier-mâché. You have dreamt of this before, a serious matter. You delight in torment. We were made for this. I … Continued
(North Adams, MA: Tupelo Press, 2020) One night after three am, Carol Ann Davis holds her sleeping seven-year-old boy, Luke, as he shutters and mumbles from night terrors, “My boy wakes repeating I don’t know I don’t know.” After he … 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
To put off doing what I need to, I plan a trip to Detroit with my mom. I spend hours looking at every Airbnb in the city, thinking of all the empty houses. There’s the ones that burned … Continued
A professor once wrote me that to write of fruit or flowers or dreams, no matter how deftly, is the lowest form of metaphor, after processions. Years later, on the subject again, she said that time indicted horses … Continued
(North Adams, MA: Tupelo Press, 2019) You don’t so much open this book as you step into it. In this pocket-size creation from Tupelo Press, featuring the arresting illustrations of Lavinia Hanachiuc, Katie Farris seduces us into an uncanny dimension … Continued
The lady upstairs is yelling at her kids. I mean, really yelling. The high whine of these kids’ voices and the pitter-patter lightness of their footsteps suggest the oldest can’t be older than ten—or at least not … Continued
With purpose, you pull up the blinds. Light enters the room like a feeling violating a man. Sitting up in a bed built for a husband and a wife, I think for a second nature has taken us … Continued
(Frankfurt, KY: Broadstone Books, 2019) There certainly is a need for fantasy in our culture. Fantasy novels, sci-fi novels, manga, anime, adult fantasy fiction and films, fan fiction — the list runs like a stream into an ever-growing groundswell of … Continued
For many years, I did not drink beer and then, suddenly, I did. Before that, before I drank beer, I drank wine. For many years when I was asked at a party, at a gathering, at an event, … Continued