Category: Reviews & Criticism

Poetry Review: Jeanne Griggs Reads Hell, I Love Everybody: The Essential James Tate

Hell, I Love Everybody is a collection of 52 poems edited by Dara Barrois/Dixon, Emily Pettit, & Kate Lindroos; they call it “the essential James Tate” and the editor’s note says they thought of it as a “book of beloved favorites.” It’s a slim volume, and every poem in it will give readers the Monty…
“Portrait as Landscape”: Karin Falcone Krieger Reviews by Simone Muench & Jackie K. White’s Poetry Collection The Under Hum

The Under Hum is a small book that is large and generous in so many ways: double the usual number of authors, and full of lines by modern working poets that “seed” the invented poetic forms and linguistic experiments of this collaboration. The Surrealist feminists have arrived and they come with ghostly memories and scars,…
Fiction Review: Emily Webber Reads Brendan Gillen’s Debut Novel Static

Brendan Gillen’s debut novel follows a trio of musicians trying to survive in New York City. Static explores the sacrifices artists make, the realities of who makes it big and who doesn’t, and the messy but sometimes magical process of collaborative creation. The novel is told from the point of view of Paul, who is…
Poetry Review: Jordan Hamel Reads Michael Chang’s Collection Toy Soldiers

The term “Gruen Transfer,” named after some dead Austrian architect, defines the state of idealized hyperreality realized by deliberate reconstruction of a person’s surroundings. Every time you take that first step into a giant mall, there’s a small moment; a moment of disorientation and confusion as you survey the chaos of new surroundings, a moment when…
Fiction Review: Mia Carroll Reads Zeeva Bukai’s Novel The Anatomy of Exile

Zeeva Bukai’s debut novel, The Anatomy of Exile, follows the Abadi family, who in the wake of the 1967 Israeli Six-Day War, moves to America, where the complicated foreign relations of their home country continue to influence their daily lives. This work feels resoundingly timely in this moment of unspeakable violence, but it also reminds…
Book Review: Matt Martinson Reads Russell Persson’s Mix of Fiction + Essays These Threads Who Lead to Bramble

A standard element of any book review is to partially summarize a book without giving too much away, to give a sense of what others will find without telling them everything about that book. But how does one do such a thing for Russell Person’s These Threads Who Lead to Bramble, where the “sense”—the feelings,…
“Toward an Indeterminate Future”: Eric Tyler Benick on Jennifer Quartararo’s Memoir An Arbitrary Formation of Unspecified Value

“A link exists between the deficiency of our blood and our embarrassment in duration,” the Romanian philosopher and aphorist Emil Cioran says in All Gall is Divided. He continues, “Don’t our conscious states derive from the discoloration of our desires?” In Jennifer Quartararo’s debut An Arbitrary Formation of Unspecified Value, the question of anemia, both…
“Alas, Heroic Yorick”: Nicole Yurcaba Reads Timothy Schaffert’s Novel The Titanic Survivors Book Club

The tragedy of the RMS Titanic, which met its fate in the North Atlantic’s icy waters on April 14, 1912, during its maiden voyage, continues to awe, intrigue, and fascinate the general public. Modern-day disasters like the Titan submersible implosion not only renew interest in the infamous ship’s brief existence, they also reignite conversations about…
Poetry Review: Jen Schneider Reads Jeddie Sophronius’ Collection Interrogation Records

“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”—Ella Wheeler Wilcox, “Protest” Interrogation Records, by Jeddie Sophronius, responds powerfully to the challenge and need to redress silence and amplify attention addressed toward past harms. The documentary poetry collection offers insights into the 1965-1966 mass killings of members of the Indonesian Communist Party…