Category: Reviews & Criticism

Operating Systems, a poetry collection by Joe Pan, reviewed by Eric Aldrich

The title of the Joe Pan’s poetry collection, Operating Systems, refers to the operating systems underpinning society, from the interpersonal to the international, as well as the operating systems of poetry. The collection is divided into four sections of five to seven poems each, and a long prose poem that constitutes all of section five.…
Joaquin Macias Reviews Women and Men, a new edition of Joseph McElroy’s classic novel

In the new edition of Joseph McElroy’s classic novel Women and Men, we follow James Mayn and Grace Kimball, two neighbors who “never quite meet” but whose lives nearly touch through mutual friends across the city, Grace’s dreams, and a few passes in the streets. The narrative is told in a vignette style, jumping between…
“Hear the Chorus Underfoot”: Jesi Buell Reviews Alice Hatcher’s Novel The Wonder That Was Ours

“How hard a thing is life to the lowly,and yet how human and real!”—W. E. B. Du Bois The Wonder That Was Ours begins innocently as a Caribbean cabbie picks up new passengers but quickly maneuvers past increasing racial, psychological, and ideological tensions until it crescendos at an apocalyptic fever pitch. The narrative and topical…
House of the Black Spot, a graphic novel by Ben Sears, reviewed by James Ardis

House of the Black Spot is the latest in Ben Sears’s Double+ graphic novel series. This is my first experience with Sears’ work, yet the world he imagines leaves an instant impact. In Bolt City, where much of the book’s early action takes place, there are streets lined with vibrantly-colored buildings and hovering robots capable…
Kelsi Brown on Miraculum, a carnival novel by Steph Post

“‘Step right up, gents! Step right up, ladies! That’s right! Prepare to be astounded, confounded and utterly shocked beyond your wildest dreams!’” The perception of the carnival as a happy place with the central purpose of bringing amusement and joy to the crowd gets waved to the side in this fantastical realist take on…
Settlers, a poetry collection by F. Daniel Rzicznek, reviewed by Esteban Rodríguez

In his latest collection, F. Daniel Rzicznek leads readers through a world ripe with abandonment and haunted by fragments of a past that are as mysterious as they are important, at least within the attempt to make meaning in the face of loss and desolation. Make no mistake, Settlers is full of life: fathers, dogs,…
Ashley Garris on This Hasn’t Been a Very Magical Journey So Far, a novel by Homeless

What are you supposed to do when Sid, an orange cat wearing a leather jacket, knocks on your door significantly later than he was supposed to? Well, if you’re trying to find your recently deceased lover, then you go on a journey with Sid, naturally. This Hasn’t Been a Very Magical Journey So Far by…
Meiko Ko on Gillian Cummings’ The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter

Shakespeare’s Ophelia is an evocative figure of suffering, of men’s betrayal of women, as especially expressed within court patriarchy. The famed play finds her crushed by the cruelty and self-interests of her father, her brother, Hamlet, and Hamlet’s mother. She could have fought. She did not. Circumstances and times preventing her, she could only choose…
Shelf Life of Happiness, short stories by Virginia Pye, reviewed by Charles Duffie

In “Best Man,” the opening story from Virginia Pye’s new collection, Keith flies to Reno to attend Don’s wedding. Don is Keith’s best friend, as gay as Keith is straight, living with AIDS, and marrying a woman. That last fact confuses Keith, but soon all his expectations are unboxed: Don is near death, the wedding…