Category: Reviews & Criticism

The Fatherlands, prose poems by Michael Trocchia, reviewed by Nick Kocz

I thought often of the surrealist painters of the last century—specifically, Salvador Dali and Giorgio de Chirico—while reading The Fatherlands, Michael Trocchia’s brooding chapbook of thirty-three Roman-numbered prose poems. The opening piece, with its evocation of “a time when the hours themselves will be melted down for the glass of transparent death” brings to mind…
“Authenticity and Alienation”: Dennis B. Ledden on Jim Daniels’ Birth Marks

Although the title of this new superb collection by Jim Daniels, the award-winning author of thirteen previous books of poetry, may very well be a reference to the poems themselves, we may also speculate that his title refers to the nature of his experiences while growing up in 1960s/70s Detroit and to the alienation that…
Kelsie Hahn Reviews Twilight of the Wolves, a novel by edward j rathke

edward j rathke’s novel Twilight of the Wolves opens with a boy digging graves. He is alone. Everyone he knows is dead, consumed by a war that will engulf cities, peoples, a continent. It has already consumed his heart. Or so it appears: By the first nightfall, he no longer cried. By morning his lips…
Theories of Forgetting, a novel by Lance Olsen, reviewed by Joe Sacksteder

It’s cliché for reviewers to use the phrase “a _______ experience like no other.” When the experience is a reading experience, what the reviewer usually means is that the plot/characters/setting/language are particularly compelling/unique/distinctive/bold. In other words—if you read good books—an experience like quite a lot of others. But Lance Olsen’s novel Theories of Forgetting reminds…
The Static Herd, a novel by Beth Steidle, reviewed by Allegra Hyde

How do we write about death? Explain the inexplicable without sounding overwrought, cliché, false? Perhaps we don’t. Perhaps we avoid it, dance around it, mask it in metaphor until any real substance is lost. If this is the case, we might take direction from Beth Steidle, whose recent novel, The Static Herd, addresses the paradox…
Someone Else’s Wedding Vows, poetry by Bianca Stone, reviewed by m. forajter

Bianca Stone’s Someone Else’s Wedding Vows is a beautiful book. Published by the new partnership between Tin House and Octopus Books, Stone’s first full length collection of poetry explores the self from a distance in order to construct a clearer view of its movements and position within the larger world. Stone’s often passive reflections seem…
Together, Apart, fiction by Ben Hoffman, reviewed by Gavin Tomson

“The Great Deschmutzing,” the first story in Ben Hoffman’s chapbook collection, Together, Apart, begins with a gut-punch: “The first thing I want you to know is that none of us miss you.” The narrator, here, is speaking to her recently deceased father, in her heart and mind a failure. The same day he died, her…
Potluck Supper with Meeting to Follow, an essay collection by Andy Sturdevanton, reviewed by Nichole L. Reber

Books about place have an almost guaranteed audience of locals who already live in that place and travelers, who may have or may eventually travel to the locale of topic. That can’t necessarily be said of Andy Sturdevant’s book about place, Potluck Supper with Meeting to Follow. The 233-page collection of short pieces (called essays…
Backswing, short stories by Aaron Burch, reviewed by Jeremy Griffin

There’s this great video on YouTube of the late Kurt Vonnegut giving a lecture on story shapes. Standing before a chalkboard in a dusty brown blazer, the author graphs out some of the more common narrative arcs, the idea being that the more familiar one is with the shape of stories, the easier it is…