Category: Reviews & Criticism

Book Review: Jen Schneider Reads Constantia “Connie” Munda’s Family Court Docunovel Mother’s Day in the Empire State

Constantia “Connie” Munda’s Mother’s Day in the Empire State: Or, an Answer to the Arraignment of Women is a family-court novel that dismisses the comforts of home and of an idealized narrative of motherhood. It sets forth its method early in its prose: this is, Munda writes, a “deposition novel discovered in the Public Records…
Fiction Review: Adam Stutz Reads Arqueles Vela’s Posthumous Collection Señorita Etcetera

“The door of the Café opens onto the most populous avenue, riotous with sun. Nevertheless, upon crossing this threshold hanging as if from the last rung of reality, one seems to enter the subway of dreams, ideations.” So begins this terrific translation by Julianna Neuhouser of Arqueles Vela’s formative work, Señorita Etcetera. This dual language…
“Without Explanation”: Megan Nichols Reviews Susan L. Leary’s Poetry Collection More Flowers

In More Flowers, Susan L. Leary doesn’t have to explain herself. Instead, she creates a psychological landscape in which the speaker careens between questioning and asserting, between the concrete and abstract, between lyric and plain speak. The absence of a traditional narrative structure is not a weakness, but a departure from her previous collection, Dressing…
Fiction Review: Ashley Honeysett Reads Vi Khi Nào & Lily Hoàng’s Collection Timber & Lua

Timber & Lua is a book of ten short stories, stories whose plots follow the logic of dreams rather than the logic of waking life. For example, several of the stories chart the relationship between a woman and her boyfriend, who tries to please her by turning into a small dog. The stories are formally…
Book Review: Dan Campion Reads Marc Vincenz’s Collection No More Animal Poems

Before looking into No More Animal Poems I happened to read Cynthia Griffin Wolff’s Emily Dickinson and Adam Nicolson’s Bird School. Wolff’s meticulous readings of Dickinson sharpened my alertness to Vincenz’s intricate system of wordplays and allusions. Nicolson’s masterly and conventional observations of the natural world gave me a foil to Vincenz’s equivalently masterly and…
Nonfiction Review: Patrick Thomas Henry Reads Kristine Langley Mahler’s Essay Collection Teen Queen Training

Readers of Mahler’s other excellent essay collections—Curing Season and A Calendar Is a Snakeskin—already know that form is clay in her hands, and she has a potter’s fine touch in shaping every word into a vessel brimming with beauty. In the case of Kristine Langley Mahler’s Teen Queen Training, equally inventive and lyrical, a master…
Fiction Review: Al Kratz Reads Luke Goebel’s New Novel Kill Dick

Readers entering the world of Luke Goebel’s new book, Kill Dick, should prepare to face the proverbial Good News and Bad News. On the downside, it’s a trip to the fall of 2016 when the “orange haze of doom” is not in the rearview mirror but instead steamrolling full speed ahead. An unfortunate stint in…
“A Wild Waltz”: Aimee LaBrie Reads Lisa Slage Robinson’s Esquire Ball: Stories from the Great Black Swamp

To dive into Lisa Slage Robinson’s 13 electric short stories in Esquire Ball is to enter a world where the women must use wit, vim, and chess-like precision to survive a legal landscape fraught with land mines of male ego, greed, and desire. While the stories shift in point of view and plot, a recurring…
“We Are Made of Other People’s Secrets”: Scott Ferry Reviews Lauren Scharhag’s Poetry Collection A Food Court in Hell

I am here to give people the good news about Lauren Scharhag, if you do not already know. She is a treasure of contemporary poetry; not only because she offers us our lost histories in vivid color and taste, but because she heals the exit and entry wounds as she works. She, in many ways,…