Category: Reviews & Criticism
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The PornME Trinity, the 2nd Edition of David Leo Rice’s novella, reviewed by Dave Fitzgerald
Though I haven’t ever been able to source the original quote, Chuck Klosterman once shared a borrowed sentiment which has endured, for me, at least as strongly as anything else he’s ever written (and I’m a pretty big fan). The quote of the quote, from I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains, reads as…
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Like a Drop of Ink in a Downpour, memories of Soviet Russia by Yelena & Galina Lembersky, reviewed by Alexandra Grabbe
After reading Like a Drop of Ink in a Downpour by Yelena & Galina Lembersky, I felt as if I had run the gantlet and stumbled out the other side with bruises all over my body. Why? The authors document the harsh reality of life in the Soviet Union before the end of the Cold…
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Simultaneities & Lyric Chemisms, Futurist poetry by Ardengo Soffici, reviewed by Daniel Barbiero
Ardengo Soffici—poet, painter, art critic—only spent a short time as a Futurist, but it was a particularly fruitful time. His initiation into Futurism was unconventional. As critic for the influential Florentine journal La Voce, in spring of 1911 he saw a number of Futurist paintings in an exhibition at La Mostra d’Arte Libera in Milan.…
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“Remember This When You’re Hungry”: Morgan English Reviews Su Cho’s The Symmetry of Fish
Remember this: “Even a ghost that eats and dies again will have better color.” Su Cho’s The Symmetry of Fish presents myth, story, and language as inseparable from the rituals of eating and preparing food. The speaker lives inside a legend: “I must / cherish this landscape because all the persimmons tumbling down / the…
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Dave Fitzgerald Reviews Terena Elizabeth Bell’s Story Collection Tell Me What You See
It’s funny. When I scheduled with Heavy Feather last month for this to be my first review of 2023, I didn’t really give much thought to the fact that it would post just a few days after the 2nd anniversary of the January 6th attacks. I mean, sure, I thought it would be a good…
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Ansgar Allen: Review of Performances for the End of Time by Harold Jaffe
Harold Jaffe’s latest, Performances for the End of Time, has all but given up on humanity. In the assessment of the book, humanity is facing its end, and knows it. This knowledge cannot be digested. There is no digesting the fact of one’s imminent and unavoidable self-destruction. Humanity persists within the book as a serviceable…
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“Some Membrane to Push Against”: Time, Memory, and Representation in Hayden Church’s So What? by Dustin Cole
Hayden Church’s new poetry collection So What? opens with a more or less perfect short story. “Jackson County War” is narrated by a perceptive three-year-old who describes the razing of his family farm and the slaughtering of its black and white inhabitants by the Great Possums, a powerful Jackson County clan disgruntled by the outcome…
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“What We Leave Behind”: William O’Daly’s Poetry Collection The New Gods Reviewed by Toti O’Brien
With no title poem to ease our way, we wonder who William O’Daly’s New Gods are. Trying to identify them is one of several paths we can borrow as we tread the intricate landscape of his verse. Are they uppercase, lowercase? Singular or multiple? Are they better than the old ones? Are the old ones…
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Book Review: The Anchored World, flash fairy tales and folklore by Jasmine Sawers, reviewed by Stephanie Martin
The Anchored World, Jasmine Sawers’ debut collection, uses flash fiction to reimagine classic Eastern and Western fairy tales and folklore that are often much longer than what Sawers’ has written. However, Sawers not only reimagines fairy tales and folklore; they also invent their own along the way. On the surface, Sawers’ collection seems to answer…
Heavy Feather Review 