Category: Reviews & Criticism
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The High Alive: An Epic Hoodoo Diptych by Carlos Sirah, reviewed by Dave Karp
The 3rd Thing, a small Olympia, Washington, press, is explicitly committed to cross-genre, inter-surrectional experimental writing; it publishes books that challenge how we imagine. Carlos Sirah’s The High Alive: An Epic Hoodoo Diptych certainly fulfills that mission. Sirah’s book is a recent entry in the American tradition of bardic incantations, from Whitman onward, meant to…
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Funeral for Flaca, an essay collection by Emilly Prado, reviewed by Jamie Moore
One thing I learned right away from Funeral for Flaca, is that we can trust Emilly Prado with the playlist. She earns this credibility with the playlist-inspired structure of the book, each chapter named after a song that represents that moment her in life. And if you feel like I feel about playlists, you know…
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Pine, a poetry collection by Julia Koets, reviewed by Carolyn Oliver
Pine, winner of the Michael Waters Poetry Prize, is the second book of poems by Julia Koets (author of Hold Like Owls and The Rib Joint: A Memoir in Essays). Grounded in the woods, fields, and shores of the South, these poems chart the love between women, by custom and necessity long kept secret. Pine…
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The Prince of Mournful Thoughts, a story collection by Caroline Kim, reviewed by Philip Clapper
The stories in Caroline Kim’s collection The Prince of Mournful Thoughts all relate in some way to Korea, Koreans, or the Korean diaspora. Each story has a unique viewpoint character. The wide range of stories are often quite personal, the principal conflicts primarily having to do with familiar or other personal relationships. The pieces are…
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“Reacting to Crisis”: Tania Pabón Acosta on Margaret Emma Brandl’s Tuscaloosa (Or, In April, Harpies)
Margaret Emma Brandl’s new novella, Tuscaloosa (Or, In April, Harpies) (released this July as an eBook), tracks two sisters on their search for each other during the aftermath of a tornado that has ripped through Tuscaloosa. The book operates on two levels, both personified in sisters Kennedy and Esther. Not only do we witness the…
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As Breaks the Wave Upon the Sea, a short story collection by Robert Wallace, reviewed by Maria Judnick
For thirteen summers, I rose early every morning for swim practice. I relished watching the sun rise as I did my laps, listening to the last early birdsong as the neighborhood stirred awake, pacing myself by the slow, steady wake of the swimmer in front of me as my mind wandered, pondering the big questions…
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“Finding Fruits in My Palms”: A Review of Katie Farris’ A Net to Catch My Body in Its Weaving by Tiffany Troy
Katie Farris’ chapbook, A Net to Catch My Body in Its Weaving, is more than a chapbook of haunting; it returns us to that distinctly humanist “point of wonder” of what separates human beings from animals. The Oedipean riddle by the Sphinx and Pico della Mirandola’s famous speech all point to humans as the two-legged…
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“Response as Strategy”: A Review of Claudia Rankine’s Just Us by Ben Lewellyn-Taylor
Around the time that Donald Trump became a serious presidential candidate, many Americans in the U.S. took an active interest in the prospect of conversation. Some believed in talking to white people about not voting for him, while others believed in not talking to white people already determined to vote for him. Each position seemed…
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An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe, a poetry collection by Heidi Seaborn, Reviewed by Deborah Bacharach
An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe, I could pick this book up for the title alone: funny and terrifying for the juxtaposition of insomniac and slumber, enticing for being set in a space where girls share their secrets, and thrilling for the chance to do so with the icon Marilyn Monroe. In Seaborn’s second…
Heavy Feather Review 