Category: Reviews & Criticism
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Review: Louise Henrich on This Isn’t Who We Are, a fiction chapbook by Barry Graham
“And so it begins, like this, waiting too long for a lazy train out of West Toledo.” Forget that this review is published in November. It is truly October. The beautiful grime of This Isn’t Who We Are will get under your nails and other places you cannot easily access. When I was young, my friend’s…
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“Who is ‘You?’ – Identification and Importance of the Addressee in Poetry,” a craft essay by Jillian M. Phillips
The poet’s choice of point of view is just as important as the imagery, diction, or meter. By choosing a speaking direction for their poem, they choose the way the poem will be read. Choosing first person often means that the reader will read the speaker, “I”, as the poet; this can limit their interpretation,…
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Review: Nathan Floom on Other Kinds, short stories by Dylan Nice
The way seasons transition, so too do Dylan Nice’s stories in Other Kinds. Nice’s stories inhabit that sort of isolation very few people understand outside of the Midwest, a place of all seasons. Born in and of the Midwest, Nice’s stories and characters push toward the necessity and immediacy of moments, moments that arguably articulate…
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Review: Melancholia, by Kristina Marie Darling
Kristina Marie Darling has created a true gem of a poetry collection with Melancholia (An Essay). Reminiscent of Anne Carson’s use of language and interpretation in Decreation and Natasha Trethewey’s narrative arc in Bellocq’s Ophelia, Darling utilizes language and imagery to create a flowing story told through poetry. Darling is incredibly adept at painting pictures…
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Review by Nathan Moore: Bodies Made of Smoke, a novella by J. Bradley
Sometimes I wonder about all the TV I’ve missed. Whether from sleep, chemically-induced miasma, or just lack of electricity, I have missed a lot of TV. I missed the Highlander TV series that ran during the nineties. Reading J. Bradley’s Bodies Made of Smoke makes me wish I had seen some of it. The book’s five…
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Review: A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World, by Adam Clay
The poems in Adam Clay’s A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World listen for clarity in the constant noise, the constant static, of time. Like someone who refuses to press the scan button on a stereo, the poems turn the dial one click at a time so as not to miss one clear…
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Review: William Henderson on Adaptation, a young adult novel by Malinda Lo
NOUN: 1. The act or process of adapting. 2. The state of being adapted. 3. Something, such as a device or mechanism, that is changed or changes so as to become suitable to a new or special application or situation. 4. A composition that has been recast into a new form: The play is an…
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“Dog-eared”: William Henderson Reviews Crewel, a young adult novel by Gennifer Albin
Without Katniss Everdeen and the 13 Districts, and all of the other books in which a young woman, despite all odds, triumphs in a world almost-but-not-quite like ours, Adelice Lewys and the world of Arras in Gennifer Albin’s young-adult novel, Crewel, would not exist. The story, even though derivative, gets points for its unique take…
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Review: William Henderson on Earth, Air, Fire, Water: The Elementals, a novel by Francesca Lia Block
Billed as an “adult novel,” The Elementals, by Francesca Lia Block (The Weetzie Bat books, Guarding the Moon) catapults us into the world of Ariel, a girl on the cusp of womanhood, struggling to make sense of her first year of college, her mother’s bout with cancer, and the disappearance of a friend. She’s bullied,…
Heavy Feather Review 