Category: Reviews & Criticism
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Kissing a Tree Surgeon, Eleanor Levine’s short story collection, reviewed by Judy T. Oldfield
On page 133 of Eleanor Levine’s story collection, Kissing a Tree Surgeon, I sat up straight, thrown for a loop at the name Diane Lewis. Though the marketing and jacket copy never refer to the collection as a novel in flash or linked stories, as a reader, I had thought of it as one; every…
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Maria Judnick on Sydneyside Reflections, an Everytime Press travelogue by Mark Crimmins
For the last year in much of the world, many of us have spent most of our days at home. We have memorized every freckle on our partner’s faces, walked every street in our neighborhoods, cleaned out every closet, and baked a lot of bread. For some, this time at home has been invigorating. For…
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“Heavy Feeling”: A Review of Gina Nutt’s Night Rooms by Ben Lewellyn-Taylor
“Sometimes the unseen is more terrifying than what’s in view,” writes Gina Nutt. In a horror film, the camera passes over empty rooms, training the audience to look for what may or may not be there. Almost scarier than the figure that appears is the one that doesn’t, the feeling of dread left unfulfilled by…
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“The Echo Lasts and Lasts”: Loss and Renewal in Donna Vorreyer’s To Everything There Is, reviewed by Amy Strauss Friedman
To Everything There Is, the title of Donna Vorreyer’s new book of poetry, immediately brings to mind the bible verse from Ecclesiastes and the Pete Seeger song “Turn! Turn! Turn!” Everything has its season we’re told, and we know this to be true. A time for everything under heaven. What it doesn’t suggest, however, is…
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“The Literature of Doom-scrolling”: Gabriel Blackwell’s Correction, a review by Gillian Perry
Reaching the end of this collection, or novel, or account, or whatever this book is to be categorized as, Blackwell acknowledges, “And then of course there is the internet.” Rescue Press’s 2019 Open Prose Selection, Correction does more than just acknowledge the internet—it displays the multifaceted way in which the internet has changed our thinking.…
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“The Parts We Play”: Jesi Buell Reviews Theatrix, poetry plays by Terese Svoboda (Anhinga Press)
chance but a chainof electrons vibrating[almostendlessly] only error shitting life I watched Matthew Holness’ Possum right before I picked up this book. That may be why I felt the puppet on the cover of Terese Svoboda’s Theatrix: Poetry Plays held such a sense of foreboding. Both puppets have that same disturbing anthropomorphic face that is…
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“In the Tearing Wind”: A Conversation with Edward Foster’s A Looking-Glass for Traytors by Peter Valente
Edward Foster, in his new book of poems A Looking-Glass for Traytors, explores the nature of desire and memory, risking the articulation of what cannot be said, even to the very end, despite chaos, pain, or the oncoming night. So that ecstasy or understanding might be possible: “maintain a quiet surface, and sublimity within is…
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Esteban Rodríguez on The Tenant of Fire, an award-winning University of Pittsburgh Press Press poetry collection by Ryan Black
The writer Jay McInerney once said that every generation needed a Manhattan novel, one that captured the culture and sentiment of the time. While his novel Bright Lights, Big City was quite innovative with the use of the second person, as well as with its insight into the publishing industry and New York’s vibrant night…
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![Book Review by Shannon Nakai: “Life, Language, and the [Im]permanence of Being in Dora Malech’s Flourish“](https://heavyfeatherreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/20-malech-flourish-front_1_orig.jpg?w=517)
Book Review by Shannon Nakai: “Life, Language, and the [Im]permanence of Being in Dora Malech’s Flourish“
In her fourth collection of poetry, Dora Malech unveils the miracles and complications of being in her incisive linguistic and imagistic exploration of her everyday surroundings. Flourish is presented in four sections, each epigraphed by a poem that features the titular word, and each that offers a honed glimpse of dormant power that lies in…
Heavy Feather Review 