Category: Reviews & Criticism

“A World to Come”: Sarah Giragosian Reads Natalya Sukhonos’ Poetry Collection Sunlight Trapped in Stone

“Mount St. Helens in ashes,” writes Natalya Sukhonos in her newest poetry collection Sunlight Trapped in Stone, setting the scene fora dazzling ars poetica: “Enter the ballooning spider / who sends a long silken thread / into the molten core / only to let go.” Here, Sukhonos nods to the iconic American poets of the…
Fiction Review: Mia Carroll Reads Zeeva Bukai’s Epistolary Novel The World Between

Zeeva Bukai’s The World Between is a collection of short letters from a woman in an Israeli sanatorium to her husband back in New York. She reflects on the breakdown of their marriage and her early life during the Holocaust. The nameless narrator grew up in Poland until the start of the Second World War,…
Fiction Review: Sayantani Roy Reads Glen Pourciau’s Story Collection Under

Glen Pourciau has a knack for crafting moments where ordinary characters find themselves in strange quandaries. In The Art of Subtext, Charles Baxter tells us that the best stories have characters who “create scenes that in life, in all likelihood, we would avoid.” Pourciau’s characters excel in just that. Simple arguments heat up and turn into…
Poetry Review: J. Michael Wahlgren Reads Eric Weiskott’s Collection Cycle of Dreams

In Cycle of Dreams, Eric Weiskott presents this notion of an individual on a quest. It’s a common notion in literature to be on a quest, whether that quest be spiritual or a journey from one physical place to another. The verse in the book is structured and there’s a playfulness and simplicity to Weiskott’s…
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…