Category: Reviews & Criticism

Zuri Etoshia Anderson Reviews On the Bitch, a summer flash novella by Matt Potter

What does it mean to have a stable marriage or romantic relationship? What does it mean to be a parent? What is it like to be a citizen in a foreign country? Matt Potter addresses these themes and more with his summer novella On the Bitch. Hugh, a middle-aged English teacher to immigrants, and his…
“The Devil in the Details”: History and Myth in Lee Klein’s JRZDVLZ, a review by Jesi Buell

“Whoever languishes in thoughtful reenactmentof the past falls prey to cruel beasts.” —Lee Klein In his latest novel, Lee Klein introduces the Jersey Devil (JeRZey DeViLZ) as a sympathetic beast living across hundreds of years in the Pine Barrens of Southern New Jersey. The novel blends archival fact with longstanding myths, which serves to both amplify…
“Cults, Monsters, and Strange Rites” for Haunted Passages: On The Void and the Cosmic by Sean Oscar

Previously, I discussed a film described by some as ‘Lovecraftian’. I rejected this designation, observing that ‘for a text to be truly Lovecraftian, it requires more than cults and monsters and strange religious practices—it requires existential dread’. Here, I shall discuss a film that does meet this designation, and I shall explain why. But, further…
“The Roadmap to Escape the Inferno”: Jason Teal Reviews Candice Wuehle’s Poetry Collection BOUND

Too often presses aspire to publishing on the basis of reaching an audience and having an impact on letters—and everyone tries to sell books the same way—all while passing the claim that subverting our expectations and experiences comes second, or postmortem, to artmaking. Too often this quality of art goes unremarked on more deeply than…
Space Academy 123, an ensemble graphic novel by Mickey Zacchilli, reviewed by Trey Brown

Space Academy 123 is an abundant story full of likeable characters, simple-but-expressive imagery, and unique storytelling. And this is a comic in which author Mickey Zacchilli (*great name) seems to be having a ton of fun. At first glance the comic appears very chaotic because a lot of action is going on and we meet…
The Fire Lit & Nearing, J.G McClure’s debut poetry collection, reviewed by Daniel Casey

Ruminating on alternate paths, detailed speculation on choices not made, and a darkly comic melancholy characterize J.G. McClure’s debut poetry collection The Fire Lit & Nearing. The tone of these poems when they are most successful is casual crafting surreal responses to the mundane facts of living. From the opening poem ‘Odyssey II’ imagining an…
Sara Burant on Richard Greenfield’s latest poetry collection, Subterranean

Subterranean, Richard Greenfield’s latest collection, is a starkly beautiful and haunting book. Situated mostly in the desert Southwest, these poems inhabit a psychic space called grief, a borderland that hems us in and defines our edges, the negative space that shapes our lives. The grief is personal, addressing a father’s death. And it is public,…
After the Death of Shostakovich Père, a memoir by Maya Sonenberg, reviewed by Barton Smock

“I wish you could hear the bells” We are many and we sit in a circle. I light a match for us to pass around. Inquiry is distraction’s lover. Our fathers have died, or will. We have read Maya Sonenberg’s After the Death of Shostakovich Père, a dark music of spiritual interruptions, a predictive diary,…
Wintering, a hybrid poetry collection by Megan Snyder-Camp, reviewed by Dan Alter

More poets seem drawn each year to some version of the genre called “hybrid,” and Wintering by Megan Snyder-Camp is an exemplary book of this kind. The genre involves, usually, a blend of verse and prose, with lyric, documentary and other modes set side by side. Often these extend to a book-length work constructed around…