Category: Reviews & Criticism

The Living Method, a poetry collection by Sara Nicholson, reviewed by Sarah Katz

The cover of The Living Method is reminiscent of that painting, “Vertumnus,” by Guiseppe Arcimboldo, (ca. 1590)—so reminiscent that, save for its red monochromatic color scheme, it’s a close replica of the original. Fertility, this image expresses (as the original does), with all its grape lips and hair and potato cheeks, and yet, the redness…
Faulty Predictions, stories by Karin Lin-Greenberg, reviewed by Erin Flanagan

Karin Lin-Greenberg’s collection, Faulty Predictions, winner of the prestigious Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, wonderfully captures the moments when characters begin to see beyond their preconceptions into a fuller view of their lives and others’. The moments themselves are both large and small—ranging from a high school student’s suicide to a sister and brother’s…
“Sprezzatura Is as Sprezzatura Doesn’t”: Daniel Scott Parker on Mike Young’s New Poetry Collection

“Years, that’s what years do / Yours, that’s what yours do.” This is the kind of tautological ticket stub we get upon entry. Where is is the same as does. But sprezzatura is not what Sprezzatura does, I can promise you that. The blurb from BOMB on the back of the book is a clever…
Poetry Review: Srah Katz on The Americans by David Roderick

David Roderick’s latest poetry collection, The Americans, is like a massive magnet that draws diverse objects into its field—as any successful book attempting to distill “Americanness” should. A “diary with the trick lock,” “a cherry tree falling,” the collapse of the twin towers, the plastic carts at Target, John F. Kennedy’s death, David Lynch, David…
BJ Love Reviews His Wife Erika Jo Brown’s Book, I’m Your Huckleberry

My wife wrote a book. A good book. A good book of love poems. Some of them, the poems, aren’t about me. Enough of them are. And a quick glance at the acknowledgements will show you that, even so, this book is for me. I’m the Love the book is “for.” My name is BJ…
Nonfiction Review: Pacia Linde on Heroines by Kate Zambreno

“My sisters, my mistresses, the spiders stalking the center of the web. I circle them, I weave their tales (or unweave the tales spun about them), I wrap my silken webs around them, I devour them. My black widows, sometimes they leave widowers, they hang themselves by their own threads.” Comprised of memoir and emotive…
Distance Mover, a graphic novel by Patrick Kyle, reviewed by Nick Francis Potter

*Ed.’s Note: click image to view larger size. I’ve not seen any episodes of Doctor Who, new or old, but there is no reviewing Patrick Kyle’s Distance Mover, it seems, without mentioning the relationship between the two. I take that back: I did at one point see the first half of an episode—one of the newer…
Coyote, a novella by Colin Winnette, reviewed by Nick Sweeney

Subtly vicious and slowly heartbreaking, Coyote by Colin Winnette is a splinter that strikes a major nerve making your whole body tremble. There are few things worse than missing children, very few, but seeing the destruction and downfall of what was left behind will leave even the seasoned reader questioning just enough of the humanity…
“Jane Gregory’s Cryptology: De/coding My Enemies”: A Poetry Review by Candice Wuehle

Jane Gregory’s first book, My Enemies, possesses the density, richness and protean quality of a book that seems to feel not only its own moral weight, but also its mortality. Gregory’s never breathless speaker is nonetheless often at haste, always imbued with the energy of the continuing line but seemingly uncertain of their own capacity…