Category: Reviews & Criticism

“There is now only light in my eyes”: On Antonio Gamoneda’s Book of the Cold by Peter Valente

Antonio Gamoneda was only five years old when the Spanish Civil War began in 1936. He came of age during the Franco regime, a time when fear, ideological repression, incarcerations, and executions were commonplace. It is no surprise that someone who experienced such a world would not take the representations of reality for granted. In…
Lifting Myself by My Own Toes, a debut collection by BD Feil, reviewed by Jen Schneider

Lifting Myself by My Own Toes, written by BD Feil and published by Finishing Line Press, is a powerful force—one that leaves us curious about, if not optimistic for, experiences that lie ahead, and contemplative about the past. The collection propels while remaining bluntly and squarely grounded in periods of time and places no more.…
Pharoni, a novel by Colin Dodds, reviewed by Aaron Lee Moore

Thanks to the residual and resounding success of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, part of me now wonders if we’re now in for a resurrected trope of resurrected characters in literature. This is a sticky and risky wicket. Though with the notable exception of the biblical Christ, in most works of literature the loss…
Review: Dave Fitzgerald on Cialis, Verdi, Gin, Jag, a novel by Adam Johnson

In my younger and more vulnerable years, I used to have a very bad habit that routinely got me into trouble. And I call it a habit, but really it was probably something closer to a crosswired tic—a kind of subconscious psychic defense mechanism—I couldn’t help it, I swear—but regardless, my insistence on its innocuous,…
Review & Interview: Kristina T. Saccone on Sue Mell’s Giving Care

“I need more pills.” My mom’s texts arrive throughout my day—during back-to-back work meetings, while I’m driving to pick up my seven-year old son from school, and at all hours. “I need more pills.” “Can you get me more meds. I’ve run out.” But she isn’t out of pills; my mom has dementia. The texts…
“The Lilac Trash Enjamber”: A Review of Johannes Göransson’s Summer by PJ Lombardo

South Bend, Indiana, is a magnet for floral-horror. Summer there is so bright and blue it feels like a threat: poison grass, lively weeds, green fingers stabbing up the cracks on the westside pavement. Men wander in public and shout and wave their arms. Foxes dart. Gusts of real life. In the post-industrial midwest, terroristic…
Review: Jacob M. Appel on Tyler C. Gore’s My Life of Crime: Essays and Other Entertainments

Digression has been recognized as a distinct talent since at least the twilight of the Roman Republic when Cicero served up tangents in defense of Sestius. Sterne hailed digressions as “the sunshine” of literature; Bradbury praised them as “the soul of wit.” From Dante and Milton to Murakami and Nicholson Baker, the art of meandering…
“A visible light in the gathering darkness”: Peter Valente on Ennio Moltedo’s Poetry Collection Night

On September 11, 1973, Augusto Pinochet seized power in Chile during a coup d’état supported by the United States, overthrowing the democratically elected left-wing government of Salvador Allende. During Pinochet’s seventeen-year authoritarian military dictatorship, he persecuted leftists, socialists, and critics of his regime, which resulted in the executions and imprisonment of thousands of people, and…
They Can Take It Out, a poetry collection by Cheryl Clark Vermeulen, reviewed by Anna Zumbahlen

The first poem of They Can Take It Out presents a recognizable scene: Halloween, children in synthetics, the speaker babysitting, reading, observing. But inflecting the voice is the specter of illness, which disrupts the security of the holiday and whatever memories or familiar images might attend it. Cheryl Clark Vermeulen’s collection takes stock of things…