Author: Heavy Feather
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Paul Dee Fecteau Reviews The Family Dolls: A Manson Paper + Play Book! by John Reed
I did not try to cut out the artwork in John Reed’s The Family Dolls, released in book form in July by Outpost19. I am not saying it can’t be done, for I admit to being reticent with scissors due to a lack of dexterity which, among other things, makes it impossible for me to…
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A Review of Michael J. Seidlinger’s Runaways: A Writer’s Dilemma by Mark Ari
Michael J. Seidlinger’s new novella, Runaways: A Writer’s Dilemma, opens with a definition. We’re told a runaway is “an idea, story, or mood that escapes the moment you are right in the middle of experiencing it.” Then we’re introduced to “a writer”—the only name given the protagonist—who wants to write but can’t. They’re stuck. A…
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“Stubborn Laughter”: Robert Dunsdon Reviews The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez by Iliana Rocha
Some poor fellow jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge. “Mid-air,” says Iliana Rocha, “his bones split & feathered—he was lightness. His bones were braided wheat. Bones collapsed like a birdhouse of Popsicle sticks. He said his hands transmuted into doves, in a constant state of ascent like an apology.” These irresistible lines are but a…
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“The Field of What Is Unsaid”: A Review of Lisa Hiton’s Afterfeast by Hannah Riffell
Longing is universal, and heartbreak is as common as the cold, as any scanning of the literary canon will reveal. What the poet Lisa Hiton recognizes, however, is that the landscapes on which these universal longings unfold are wonderfully impressionistic, to the point of being somewhat unknowable to anyone besides one’s self. In Afterfeast, Hiton’s…
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“Polarities of Love”: A Review of The Pact, poems by Jennifer Militello, by Aline Soules
Love. How does it manifest itself? How many kinds are there? What are its extremes? With The Pact, Jennifer Militello explores love through imagery, language, and leaps. She never blinks and investigates the subject from its outer edges to its core. The book is framed by two poems: “Agape Feast” and “Ode to Love.” In…
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Haunted Passages: Three Poems from Mineral Planet by James Pate
[In the garden of gray latex foliage] In the garden of gray latex foliage / mouths eating out and eating in / trembling hands in front of the broken, seeping masks / a static emerald memory lodged in the back, reflecting the partylights / the bulb at the end of the hall at the end…
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“Electricity in this Dehydrated Landscape”: A Conversation with Vi Khi Nao by Mark Ari
Vi Khi Nao is a true original, a fabulously prolific artist whose curiosity, creative energy, and talent are apparently boundless. She writes poetry, fiction, drama, makes visual art, and juggles several developing manuscripts at once. She’s the sort of person who will learn a new language to collaborate on a book with someone from another…
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Titus Chalk on Sterling Karat Gold, an award-winning experimental novel by Isabel Waidner
Isabel Waidner’s Goldsmith Prize-winning new novel is a cri de coeur from a Tory Britain battered by inequities. Since the Conservatives came to power in 2010 and prescribed brutal spending cuts as an antidote to the Financial Crisis, the country has become a callous place. But worse, since the 2016 Brexit referendum emboldened charlatans, liars,…
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“Notes on Ann Lewinson’s Still Life with Meredith,” a book review by Peter Valente
Ann Lewinson’s novella Still Life with Meredith is fantastically perverse, erudite, essayistic, and precise as a laser as it navigates high and low cultures and literatures. With the passionate eye of a critic, the narrator flirts with Lacan and Derrida and with raw sexual language. The result is a novella that is funny, bizarre, unhinged,…
Heavy Feather Review 