Category: Reviews & Criticism

“An Ontological Revolution”: On Jacques Darras’ John Scotus Eriugena at Laon and Other Poems by Peter Valente

In “To Augustine: On Paradise”—a central text in Jacque Darras’ John Scotus Eriugena at Laon and Other Poems—he writes, in the voice of a pagan in the 5th century A.D.: “As a youth, raised by my direct contact with Nature, I was a pagan. Although I never observed the formal rites or sacrifices of the…
Nonfiction Review: Ariana Duckett on Elif Batuman’s The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

Elif Batuman completed her PhD in comparative literature just before publishing her essay collection The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. While working towards the degree, she spent a summer abroad translating and analyzing Uzbek and Russian prose and poetry. She poses an insight on novel writing: “the novel form…
Poetry Review: Scott Ferry Reads George Perreault’s lie down as you were born

George Perreault’s lie down as you were born not only makes a song of grief, but peoples a town, grows a forest, seeds a sky, and weaves a myth in threads of sorrow. I was so immediately taken with these poems, pulled in and not allowed ransom. In these poems the voices of father, mill…
“it all simply modulates incomprehensibly”: On Richard Hell’s Poetry Collection What Just Happened by Peter Valente

When he was in his early twenties and living in lower Manhattan in 1974, Richard Hell founded the band Television with Tom Verlaine, a friend from high school. He eventually split up with Verlaine and created the Heartbreakers, along with Johnny Thunders, the well-known guitarist who had played with the New York Dolls. Later, he…
Poetry Review: G.H. Mosson Reads Mag Gabbert’s Sex Depression Animals

As part of the arc of autobiographical American poetry, Mag Gabbert’s academic-press debut is a chiseled, yet tender self-portrait across lyric poems that skate around finalities and resonate through intersecting images, vignettes, and emotions. In this way, Gabbert’s heartfelt, jagged, and impressive poetry marks a departure from confessionalism’s origins in landed insight: Plath’s epiphanies, Lowell’s…
“Like a knight of stone who smiles”: On Robert Desnos’ Poetry Collection Night of Loveless Nights by Peter Valente

I first became aware of Robert Desnos’ poetry, as well as many of the works of the surrealists, in The Random House Book of Twentieth Century French Poetry edited by Paul Auster. The poem that was central to me in that volume was “No, Love Is Not Dead,” translated by Bill Zavatsky, with that memorable…
Poetry Review: Sarah Sarai Reads Harsh Realm by Daniel Nester

A poetic navigation through the Nineties, Daniel Nester’s Harsh Realm is a palooza of a collection, nimble of word and beautifully designed. Its poems reveal the moving parts of someone who, it would seem, doesn’t cease movement of geography or vision. While many of the poems are reflective, romantic, revelatory, you know, poemy, the opener, “My…
Fiction Review: Ben Lewellyn-Taylor Reads Emma Cline’s Novel The Guest

Alex, the young woman at the center of Emma Cline’s second novel, The Guest, spends a day at the beach among the wealthy residents on the East End of Long Island, appearing like she belongs. She’s staying with Simon, a man in his fifties, who has invited Alex to his house—with its high ceilings and…
“A Front-row Seat at the Horror Show”: Ann Leamon Reviews Lyudmyla Khersonska’s Poetry Collection Today Is a Different War

One night you go to bed in your ordinary life, only to awaken transformed. Such a transformation occurred in February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. Lyudmyla Khershonska’s wrenching, beautiful book of poems, Today Is a Different War, captures the sensation of being a citizen of a developed country on the doorstep of Europe only to…