Author: Heavy Feather
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Graphic Novels: The Nobrow Press Omni-Review by Nick Potter
*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. I believe I’ve written this before somewhere, perhaps many times and in many places, but when it comes to the book as object, as a work of art, UK-based comics and illustrations publisher Nobrow is the standard bearer. Their books and magazines, ranging from small and concertina-folded to…
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Paper Doll Fetus, poetry by Cynthia Marie Hoffman, reviewed by Jacob Collins-Wilson
Paper Doll Fetus, by Cynthia Marie Hoffman, is a short collection of poems about fetuses (think a larger-scale “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” by Wallace Stevens). Some poems discuss fetuses directly while others approach the subject obliquely. However, while this book is sixty-four pages of one subject, not once does it drag or feel repetitious.…
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How to Catch a Coyote, a novel by Christy Crutchfield, reviewed by Gabino Iglesias
The strange thing about Christy Crutchfield’s debut novel, How to Catch a Coyote, is not that it’s beautiful, but that it manages to be beautiful despite coming from a cesspool of weird encounters, profoundly uncomfortable moments, familial turmoil, unspeakable secrets too dirty to forget, pain, loss, and the down-and-out atmosphere that permeates the underbelly of…
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“The Old Reactor Keeps Chugging”: A Reflection on the Writings of David Ohle by Daniel J. Cecil
1. Throughout his entire life, my grandfather has worked and lived as a farmer. Years of shuffling feet, skinny legs pressed to the back of tobacco and dirt stained overalls, he bouncing along in the seat of a green John Deere before a slow, meditating descent into his favorite rocking chair in which he sat,…
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“Remote, Desolate, and Hard to Survive”: An Interview with Iver Arnegard by Linda Michel-Cassidy
In his collection Whip & Spur, Iver Arnegard writes wildness and isolation—the desert mesa, winter in Montana, the middle-of-nowhereness of North Dakota—places where making it to tomorrow is a daily occupation. For those who may be conjuring ideas of bucolic streams and lazy bunny-filled vistas—these are not those stories. Instead of romanticizing the rural, Arnegard…
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Poetry Review: Ally Harris on Contraband of Hoopoe by Ewa Chrusciel
In the title of Ewa Chrusciel’s new book of poetry is the word “contraband,” objects or ideas that are forbidden but desired. Hunks of cheese and obscure meats. Silk dresses, fine vases, a book, an ideology. To smuggle: the transportation of one thing to another space, particles that move but don’t disappear. Contraband of Hoopoe and…
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“Of an (Afraid-of-Disappearing) American Learning to Swim”: Michael Martrich on Reading Emily Kiernan’s Great Divide
Water often symbolizes freedom from the structures that bind us; it floods, blurs, sweeps, and/or removes us from the gridded patterns and routines (the everyday) of place, language, tradition, relationships, bureaucracies, hierarchies, and our taken-for-granted constructions of realities in which we put much or all of our faith. The ocean, in particular, symbolizes vagueness and…
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Louise Henrich Reads The Empty House, stories by Nathan Oates
Imagine The Empty House as a passport, and each story as a fresh stamp. But this collection allows the reader to do more than travel—it forces them to face who they are as a traveler. Do they exploit, patronize and appropriate, or do they participate in a meaningful and mutually beneficial exchange? The stories take…
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“Beyond the Scorpions’ Violins”: Jared Smith Reads John Amen’s strange theater
In strange theater, John Amen has written a remarkable, if emotionally difficult book of poetry that plumbs the dark nature and forces of humanity, set against our intellectual striving for human dignity and meaning in a technological age. Cloaked in the style and language of Albee and the theater of the absurd, from which this…
Heavy Feather Review 