Category: Reviews & Criticism
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“A Miraculous Construct of Worlds”: In the Kettle, the Shriek, poetry by Hannah Stephenson, reviewed by Paul David Adkins
There is something miraculous and mysterious inhabiting Hannah Stephenson’s debut poetry volume In the Kettle, the Shriek. Through Stephenson’s meticulous style, there’s a world being constructed within its pages, a world of couplets and tercets and blocks. She uses the precision and exactitude of a watchmaker to populate this landscape with beautiful details. Then, just…
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“Think of Your Kid”: Microtones, poetry by Robert Vaughan, reviewed by Jeremy Hauck
In a recent essay in Boston Review titled “Against Conceptualism: Defending the Poetry of Affect,” Calvin Bedient writes that “Vehemence of feeling nonplusses the modern personality, a hostage to ambiguity and irony.” He says, “More and more poets are suspicious of lyrical expression and devote themselves to emotionally neutral methods.” While Robert Vaughan’s Microtones can…
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No Object, poetry by Natalie Shapero, reviewed by Nathan Moore
“It is unbefitting to believe in ghosts, to believe what one reads,what one writes.” —“Arranged Hours,” Natalie Shapero I have been in possession of Natalie Shapero’s No Object for a long time—about seven weeks. I should have turned in this review a while ago. The thing is, it caught me. Have you ever found…
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The Isle of Youth, short stories by Laura van den Berg, reviewed by Erin McKnight
“It was a terrible flaw, our inability to see where our lives were leading us,” reflects one of Laura van den Berg’s characters before everything is terribly and irrevocably brought to bear. Indeed for the young women of this highly anticipated sophomore story collection who are living on the fringe, where mystery and intrigue are…
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The Disordered, poetry by Anhvu Buchanan, reviewed by David Peak
The publication of a revised edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is always a curious event. When I was in college forever ago, we studied the fourth edition. The fact that there is now a fifth edition was brought to my attention some months ago by my friend.…
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Soul in Space, new poems by Noelle Kocot, reviewed by Jordan Sanderson
Soul in Space, Noelle Kocot’s sixth full-length collection of poetry, calls us to the world and the world to us. At the end of the acknowledgements, Kocot thanks “the late Randall Jarrell—it is his gorgeous poem “Seele im Raum” that inspired the title for this book: as translated, Seele im Raum means Soul in Space.”…
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the shared properties of water and stars, poetry by Kristy Bowen, reviewed by M. Forajter
Kristy Bowen’s newest poetry collection, the shared properties of water and stars, tells the story of trapped people. Told in interconnected prose poems that look and feel like the pages of a miniature story book, Bowen creates a poetic landscape for which her fairy tale archetypes may play. Set in an idyllic suburbia, Bowen’s characters…
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This Darksome Burn, a novella by Nick Ripatrazone, reviewed by Jeremy Behreandt
Maybe, before I start talking about This Darksome Burn proper, I’ll touch on Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Inversnaid,” from which Nick Ripatrazone’s novella takes its title. The poem takes a straightforward Romantic approach to nature as scene of the sublime revelation. To quote William Cronon from “The Trouble with Wilderness,” sublime landscapes were those rare places…
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Book Review: Misha Rai on Woke Up Lonely, a novel by Fiona Maazel
Espionage with its usual mayhem of shady deals, body suits a la Tom Cruise in various productions of Mission Impossible, misunderstood cult leaders, communes, clubs with speed dating masquerading as confessionals, North Korea, Cincinnati vice uncovered literally under the city’s ground all make their nefarious presence felt in Fiona Maazel’s Woke Up Lonely. In Maazel’s…
Heavy Feather Review 