Category: Reviews & Criticism

STALL, collaborative poetry by Shane Anderson & Elvia Wilk, reviewed by David Peak

“Every thought is already over.” This line occurs fairly early on in Elvia Wilk and Shane Anderson’s fantastic collaborative chapbook, STALL—and it should be read partly as an instruction for how to proceed through these weird and tumbling poems and partly as a clue that nothing should ever make too much sense. On the publisher’s…
“DRM—Murdering the Reader, or Why Informed Reading is Good,” a technologically-minded essay by Zach Tarvin

In March, a reboot of SimCity was met with an outcry from PC gamers around the world. The game, which requires a constant, high-speed Internet connection, was more or less unplayable. SimCity publisher Electronic Arts (EA) blamed the slow-down on the massively multiplayer aspects of the game. Their servers couldn’t handle the demand—an issue that,…
Portuguese, poetry by Brandon Shimoda, reviewed by Nathan Moore

Brandon Shimoda’s Portuguese is the result of a collaborative publishing venture between Octopus Books and Tin House Books. From this information alone, you’d be right to expect something that, at the very least, is interesting. Portuguese is not only interesting, it defines new expectations about poetry. Now I expect more from poetry. There’s the “Oh,…
You Good Thing, a new poetry collection by Dara Wier, reviewed by Jordan Sanderson

Reading Dara Wier’s You Good Thing, I felt “physically as if the top of my head were taken off,” not only on the first read, but also on each subsequent read. She begins the book with a sketch and an epigraph—“by the longest route possible”—taken from a photographic biography of Fernando Pessoa. The poems do…
One, a text by Blake Butler & Vanessa Place. Assembled by Christopher Higgs. Reviewed by Will Kaufman.

One is perhaps most notable for what it is; a unique collaboration between three writers. Blake Butler and Vanessa Place were assigned the tasks, respectively, of writing the exterior landscape and interior landscape of a single character. They were not allowed to collaborate or communicate at all with each other about their projects. Once they…
Review: F IN, erasure poetry by Carol Guess, reviewed by Kelsie Hahn

At first, Carol Guess’ F IN draws attention to what’s missing. Its pages are mostly empty, as it is the parts that remain from Guess’ novella Willful Machine after being cut down to a scattering of words and phrases. The original was a mystery, including ghosts and the investigation and pursuit of a crime. This…
The Moon’s Jaw, poetry by Rauan Klassnik, reviewed by Jeremy Behreandt

I’m trying to figure out what they call the synopsis wherein each big event is separated by a dash at the beginning of a novel’s chapters. You know what I’m talking about? Like in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian: Childhood in Tennessee – Runs away – New Orleans – Fights – Is shot – To Galveston…
Dark Matter, poetry by Aase Berg, reviewed by Jeremy Behreandt

One contracts and soon succumbs to Dark Matter more than one begins to read it; no matter how this review begins, a cursory tracing of infection patterns would be more suitable. Recurrent throughout this latest translation of Aase Berg’s poetry is the image of the black shell, which might be a cracking, hatching chaosmic egg,…
“Aleksandar Hemon’s The Book of My Lives”: A Reflection by Joseph Riippi

Some things you should know about me. The day a new Radiohead record comes out, I buy it. The day a new Aaron Sorkin show premieres, I watch it. And the day a new Aleksandar Hemon book is announced, I find a galley and devour it. That’s not to say those things correlate. This is…