Author: Heavy Feather

Disembodied, a book-length fragmented fiction by Christina Tudor-Sideri, reviewed by S. D. Stewart

In his fragmentary work The Step Not Beyond (State University of New York Press, 1992; translated by Lycette Nelson), Maurice Blanchot describes writing as “not destined to leave traces, but to erase, by traces, all traces, to disappear in the fragmentary space of writing more definitely than one disappears in the tomb.” This concept of…
Dave Fitzgerald on Interrogating the Abyss, collected works by Chris Kelso

What is the abyss? Several years back, I went hiking in the Catskills with my now-wife, my childhood best friend, and his then-girlfriend in search of some unmapped swimming hole cliffjumps we’d heard about. The first one we came to was quite high, and quite narrow—a slim, deep canyon enclosing a complexly tiered waterfall. There…
Side A Poetry Collaboration: “dear denver,” by Terence Degnan & Denver Butson

Dear New York, For reasons unwilling to be revealed// My father is no longer with you// Grief as a tree has warned me// that I have my weapons misordered// birds come and go// willows dry// fall into the creek// Grief doesn’t follow any of these// James was killed by a falling machine// Falling grief, grief…
On The Year of the Monster with Tara Stillions Whitehead: An Interview by Shannon Wolf

I sometimes wonder how one person can do so much. At any one time, when I speak to Tara Stillions Whitehead, she is in departmental meetings, corralling children, squeezing in writing time, and still somehow finds the time to be a friend to all in the literary community. It is unsurprising to me that Whitehead—someone…
O, a poetry collection by Niki Tulk, reviewed by Tara Walker

When you read Niki Tulk’s O, you are enclosing yourself within a rich tapestry of glistening threads: motherhood, daughterhood, grief, falling, ruthless love and cruelty, the moon, the ocean, transformation and becoming and leaving and being born. A lesser writer might struggle to blend these elements. A book that contains phone calls with prosecutors, the…
Haunted Passages: “Possession” by Lauren Brazeal Garza

Mother, suddenly they were everywhere—dozens of chittering advertisements for an “EVP consultant.” In scrutiny of all who passed, their art-deco lettering burst fiercely from those printed slime-green flames, offset by supersonic purple. The text beckoned, FLAMORA: witness of all. Resolutions through recording. Beneath this lurked a local phone number. I put off calling her for…
Where Are the Snows, a poetry collection by Kathleen Rooney, reviewed by Esa Grigsby

As the cover suggests, these poems are a winding wry road towards the hell Rooney, almost delightfully, explains is Earth, where the speed bumps are humor, the billboards politics, and the golf-ball sized hail is spirituality. The landscape speeding, yet somehow also wallowing, by is peppered with memories, humor, philosophy, and good ole nihilism: “Sometimes…
Side A Poem: “Honestly” by Tony Gloeggler

Honestly To pass the hours I spendby her bedside, I ask moma lot of questions, some dumbto make her laugh about fartson elevators, falls in hotel halls,her famous poor eyesight,walking into wrong bathrooms,setting her beehive hair-doon fire with her lit cigarette.Anything to take her mindoff her pain, a breathfrom boredom. Some questionsuncover things I never…
The Not Yet Fallen World, new and selected poems by Stephen Dunn, reviewed by Jeanne Griggs

The Not Yet Fallen World: New and Selected Poems, by Stephen Dunn, offers poems from his nineteen volumes of poetry and adds nine new poems; there’s a last section of poems written right before his death on June 24, 2021. Dunn’s poems are famous for his observations of the marvelous in the ordinary, and for…