Category: Reviews & Criticism
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Review: Jordan Sanderson on Underlife and Portico, poetry by Michael Lynch
As I read Michael Lynch’s Underlife and Portico, I kept thinking about what another poet once told me: “Seamus Heaney’s poetry comes as close to pure sound as you can get and still make sense.” During the first read, I didn’t care what the poems were about; I simply reveled in the lush soundscape. However,…
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Review: Jillian M. Phillips on The Diegesis, a collaborative text by Chas Hoppe & Joshua Young
When reading The Diegesis by Chas Hoppe & Joshua Young, one has to know the definition of “diegesis” in order to fully appreciate it. This fantastic word is a style of (traditionally) fiction which presents an interior view of the world through the narrator’s experience. In this collaboration, the poets have taken this idea to…
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Review: Louise Henrich on Vampires in the Lemon Grove, short stories by Karen Russell
I think it would be a good idea, while reading Karen Russell’s newest collection, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, to read the title of each story and hypothesize what the story might actually be about. Most likely you’ll be wrong, unless you think the title story is about vampires in the lemon grove, in which…
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Review: Louise Henrich on Promising Young Women, fragmentary tales by Suzanne Scanlon
To verbalize what makes this book so wonderful is to do it an injustice, but I’ll try anyway. There have been many books and movies, some which were referenced, that have dealt with women who have been institutionalized, or have dealt with severe mental or emotional problems. Promising Young Women adds an ineffable quality to…
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Nathan Moore Reviews Jane Rosenberg LaForge’s With Apologies to Mick Jagger, Other Gods, and All Women
“Do I wait here? I guess I’ll go in.”—Anthony Melchiorri, Hotel Impossible, The Travel Channel As I was standing on my front porch just now I saw someone down the street get into their car. As they did so, they yelled toward the house they had just left: “Goodbye! I love you!” That’s nice.…
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Gabriel Blackwell: Best of 2012
You’re reading a “Best of 2012” list to get some recommendations for 2013, to begin to parse the prodigious number of books published/albums released/movies premiered in 2012, to reassure yourself that you’re staying on top of things somehow, to nod along with everyone else at the expected results (that book/movie/song, again?), to shake your head…
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“The House by the Sea”: Daniel J. Cecil Reviews Petrarchan by Kristina Marie Darling
In short-order three works by the same author, Kristina Marie Darling, landed on my desk. I feel a certain amount of hesitation when I decide to review another writer’s work. I almost get a bit itchy. I was initially inclined by gut reaction to pass on this one—reviewing the same author (Darling) within a few…
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“The War Within Us”: A Review of Robert Kloss’ Novel(la) The Alligators of Abraham by Sheldon Lee Compton
Now a voice spoke low from the face of the deep. Rarely before have I read a first sentence from a book that so adequately set the tone for everything to follow than this opening sentence from Robert Kloss’ Alligators of Abraham. Of course the great openings we’ve all come to know so well spring…
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Five-and-Five: Okla Elliott’s 2012 List
I love lists. I make them for any number of reasons. They help me organize my thoughts or review events, among a dozen other things, so when I was asked to compile a 2012 list for Heavy Feather Review, I accepted immediately. After I had compiled a little over half of this list, however, I…
Heavy Feather Review 