Category: Reviews & Criticism

Review: Matt Martinson Reads Kelly Krumrie’s Genre-Defying Book No Measure

I remember reading Martin Heidegger’s What Is Called Thinking? in grad school, with his near-constant refrain: “The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.” He saw a world in which human industry was advancing even as the ability or willingness to ask the big questions about life was…
Poetry Review: Dawn Macdonald Reads Aisha Sasha John’s New Collection total

Aisha Sasha John is a dancer. Aisha Sasha John writes in ALL CAPS. Aisha Sasha John is a wise woman/wise guy; is funny/not funny. Aisha Sasha John is not on the Internet as much as you might expect for someone who writes as if large portions of the Internet are being continuously generated out of…
“Flag of the Patriot in the Country of Dignity”: Peter Mladinic Reviews Mark Danowsky’s Poetry Collection Take Care

In this world where there are more machines than at any time in history, and nuclear weaponry, and divisions between and within nations, the poems in Mark Danowsky’s Take Care, dedicated to the caregivers, are in their own way political. We hear them, see them, feel them. The thrust of some poems is vertical, others…
Fiction Review: Ria Dhull Reads Osvalde Lewat’s Novel The Aquatics

Osvalde Lewat’s debut novel examines the laws and social structure of Zambuena, the fictional African country within which The Aquatics takes place. Zambuena appears to be a thinly-veiled Cameroon, Lewat’s home nation; the fictional country and the real country have numerous similarities: a French colonial history, a Christian majority, ethnic diversity, and social restrictions, notably…
Poetry Review: Scott Ferry Reads Luke Johnson’s Collection Distributary

In the rare and happy occasion of receiving a new Luke Johnson poetry book, one is ready to be floored. Those of us who have read :boys and Quiver know what we will get; it is not predictability, but surprising turns and brilliance. As we turn the first page of Distributary we encounter: “For you,…
“Tell It Slant”: Shannon Nakai on Recollection and Reality in Melora Wolff’s Essay Collection Bequeath

“Before she opened the book, and before I entered this picture, I did not know that love is a deed …” So culminates the themes of Melora Wolff’s latest essay collection, Bequeath, published by the Louisiana State University Press. Part ode to a father figure who is a loving, enigmatic storehouse of imagination, part unflinching…
Fiction Review: S. D. Stewart Reads Samuel M. Moss’ Novel The Veldt Institute

“Of course, the Veldt Institute is not commonly known—likely no one outside the Veldt Institute is aware of its existence—but it is clear that those who arrive do so at the exact time that is best for them.” This is not a review, per se. It is more a series of impressions and associations meant…
“The River Inside and Out”: Dave Karp on Matt Trease’s Poetry Collection The Outside

When I think about what it truly means to be an engaged writer, I think about writers who confront the world from some set of principles: Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, communist, or socialist, through an indigenous belief system or some other source of precepts and strictures. Matt Trease is just such an engaged writer,…
Nonfiction Review: McKenzie Watson-Fore Reads Gabriella D’Italia’s Debut Memoir Getting Dressed in the Dark

The crisis that catalyzes Gabriella D’Italia’s debut memoir, Getting Dressed in the Dark: An Artist’s Way Home, is a gruesome separation and divorce, when D’Italia learns that her partner of twenty-two years has been cheating on her with her much-younger coworker and friend. However, Getting Dressed in the Dark is much more than a divorce…