Category: Reviews & Criticism

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…
Poetry Review: Josh Nicolaisen Reads Fighting Is Like a Wife by Eloisa Amezcua

In her second full-length collection, Fighting Is Like a Wife, Eloisa Amezcua delivers a shockingly palpable recounting of the tragic relationship between boxer “Schoolboy” Bobby Chacon and his first wife, Valorie Ginn. The book shares its title with a 1983 Sports Illustrated article, which first highlights Chacon’s rise to fame and its effects on their…
Poetry Review: Zachary Kinsella Reads Caryl Pagel’s Free Clean Fill Dirt

Resonating with metaphysical awareness, humor, and clarity, Caryl Pagel’s Free Clean Fill Dirt is gracefully unglamorous in its foreboding, tactile verse that seeks to enumerate the material and moral decline of our planet. Pagel roots her eco-poetics in what she names “Ordinary Strata,” which service ekphrastic responses to familiar places that are in some form…
“Paying Attention: A Review of Lilith Walks by Susan M. Schultz” by Karin Falcone Krieger

The premise is simple: a series of short vignettes about interesting encounters while out on walks with the dog. The dog is Lilith and she is the driving force of these small fables written by her human, Susan M. Schultz. Lilith Walks is a three-year journey through a suburban neighborhood on O’ahu, Hawaii through the…
“A frame for the raw moment”: Reflexes on Sarah Rosenthal’s Lizard by Alex Rieser

There is something powerful about newness, when you first hold the book in your hands, its glossy cover and particular weight. Release parties, the words of praise on the back, honest or not. Newness is a vulnerable state. The artist has sent it onto the world and the world has yet to decide if it…
“a book is the song / of the body”: Michael Collins Reads Arthur Kayzakian’s Poetry Collection The Book of Redacted Paintings

Behind Arthur Kayzakian’s debut collection, The Book of Redacted Paintings, lies an unwritten history involving the speaker’s father, who was disappeared in the Iranian Revolution. The collection, the inaugural Black Lawrence Immigrant Writing Series Selection, ostensibly centers around the speaker’s efforts to recover a stolen portrait of his father, the painting itself accruing gravity to…
“Forever Young. And Terrorized.”: Brandon M. Stickney Reads Aaron Jacobs’ Novel Time Will Break the World

In 1976, a busload of children was hijacked by masked, gun-toting men. The Chowchilla, California (near Sacramento), bus kidnapping and live burial remains one of the most bizarre, and under-reported crimes in American history—from the $5 million ransom the wealthy perpetrators never got to demand, to the daring, bus driver-led midnight escape from the underground…