Category: Reviews & Criticism

The Last Dinosaurs of Portland, a prose chapbook by James R. Gapinski, reviewed by Shyanne Hamrick

The Last Dinosaurs of Portland may immerse us in Portland, Oregon, but do not be fooled: the collection of ten short stories doesn’t linger there, not really. Instead, it is a surreal version of Portland comprised entirely of bridges—those “rusted footbridges that spiral out of your bedroom window and meander toward your ex’s neighborhood” and…
Disembodied, a book-length fragmented fiction by Christina Tudor-Sideri, reviewed by S. D. Stewart

In his fragmentary work The Step Not Beyond (State University of New York Press, 1992; translated by Lycette Nelson), Maurice Blanchot describes writing as “not destined to leave traces, but to erase, by traces, all traces, to disappear in the fragmentary space of writing more definitely than one disappears in the tomb.” This concept of…
Dave Fitzgerald on Interrogating the Abyss, collected works by Chris Kelso

What is the abyss? Several years back, I went hiking in the Catskills with my now-wife, my childhood best friend, and his then-girlfriend in search of some unmapped swimming hole cliffjumps we’d heard about. The first one we came to was quite high, and quite narrow—a slim, deep canyon enclosing a complexly tiered waterfall. There…
O, a poetry collection by Niki Tulk, reviewed by Tara Walker

When you read Niki Tulk’s O, you are enclosing yourself within a rich tapestry of glistening threads: motherhood, daughterhood, grief, falling, ruthless love and cruelty, the moon, the ocean, transformation and becoming and leaving and being born. A lesser writer might struggle to blend these elements. A book that contains phone calls with prosecutors, the…
Where Are the Snows, a poetry collection by Kathleen Rooney, reviewed by Esa Grigsby

As the cover suggests, these poems are a winding wry road towards the hell Rooney, almost delightfully, explains is Earth, where the speed bumps are humor, the billboards politics, and the golf-ball sized hail is spirituality. The landscape speeding, yet somehow also wallowing, by is peppered with memories, humor, philosophy, and good ole nihilism: “Sometimes…
The Not Yet Fallen World, new and selected poems by Stephen Dunn, reviewed by Jeanne Griggs

The Not Yet Fallen World: New and Selected Poems, by Stephen Dunn, offers poems from his nineteen volumes of poetry and adds nine new poems; there’s a last section of poems written right before his death on June 24, 2021. Dunn’s poems are famous for his observations of the marvelous in the ordinary, and for…
“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…
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…
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…