Category: Reviews & Criticism
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“All Your Base Are Belong to Us”: Jacob Collins-Wilson on Roger Reeves’ second poetry collection Best Barbarian
Best Barbarian is Roger Reeves’ second book of poetry and it is a beast, as it wants to be. It pulls inspiration from fables, history, poetry, and literature (past and more present). In its core, Best Barbarian seeks to not just be a part of the literary canon, but to rewrite the canon, to create…
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Shannon Nakai Reviews Equestrian Monuments, a poetry collection by Luis Chaves
Eleven years after the publication of Monumentos Ecuestres (Editorial Germinal, 2011) by Luis Chaves, one of Costa Rica’s most celebrated poets, follows its first translation into English by After Hours Editions. In the introductory note, translators Julia Guez & Samantha Zighelboim discuss the intricate negotiations of language in Chaves’ playful, intuitive, linguistically acrobatic poems. Rife…
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Corey Qureshi on Alexandrine Ogundimu’s Novella Agitation
So many people are often on the verge of full collapse. A handful of or even just one missing check can throw things in limbo; stress skyrockets, credit plummets if there in the first place, favors have to be asked if they’re available—it can be the end of a sustainable way of living. Most people…
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Cinema, a novel by Samuel Kaye, reviewed by Dave Fitzgerald
Long before I started writing book reviews, I had a steady (unpaid) gig writing movie reviews (and still contribute occasional, long-form film articles to DailyGrindhouse.com and Cinedump.com, for anyone who just can’t get enough of me and my sweet, sweet opinions). I have BA’s in English and Film Studies, and have written stage plays, a…
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Refreshed Review: Pool Party Trap Loop, short stories by Ben Segal, reviewed by Carolyn DeCarlo
Pool Party Trap Loop is a palindrome and a nightmare. I have read Ben Segal’s explanation of the title, which involves a sweaty Victorian house party, a friend with a hankering for a cool slice of water to dive into, and a minor linguistic discovery, and while I appreciate his description I would have to…
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Fugitive Assemblage, a novel by Jennifer Calkins, reviewed by Dave Karp
Jennifer Calkins’ Fugitive Assemblage is a prose-poetic narrative of a female narrator’s quest, always “on the wrong track,” to flee from present trauma and painful memory onto the roads of California, roads she will travel to both figuratively and literally bury what she has lost. The narrator surreptitiously flees the hospital, an IV in her…
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Dream of Me as Water, a poetry collection by David Ly, reviewed by Margaryta Golovchenko
There is a disorienting quality to Dream of Me as Water, David Ly’s sophomore poetry collection. The ethereality of water and blueness permeate Ly’s poems, which resist cohesive thematic groupings, although each section does have a sense of adding to what came before, as evident by their titles: “Dream,” “Dream of Me,” and “Dream of…
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“Gonzo Dante”: Jesse Hilson on Garth Miró’s Novel The Vacation
Garth Miró’s novel The Vacation is rollicking, obscene fun with large veins of noxious social satire laced throughout. When a heroin-addicted, dissatisfied social climber joins a cruise in the Caribbean with his high-society European wife for a momentous time that could end in their divorce, or worse, they find themselves entering the corridors of an inescapable new…
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Nympholepsy, a collaborative writing by Alyssa Morhardt-Goldstein & Lisa Marie Basile, reviewed by Dave Fitzgerald
I hope the following statement will come across in the spirit in which it’s intended (i.e. not too pervy) but I have always had a soft spot for stories about female adolescence. Not necessarily the fun ones—though I did once read Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants in a single, delightful sitting—so much as the emotionally…
Heavy Feather Review 