Category: Reviews & Criticism

“The Monstrous Maternal in Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s Third-Millennium Heart”: A Poetry in Translation Review by Jayme Russell

Third-Millennium Heart is awash with red blood, black blood, a flood of names and namelessness. The poems pulse with RED. A stream flows from the poems, filling the exo-heart as the word “mother,” “mother,” “mother” runs RED. With each line the map of the heart grid beats. This heart is growing through a demon incantation.…
“Ghosts in the Trees”: A Review of Patricia Grace King’s novella Day of All Saints by Rachel C. Reeher

In Patricia Grace King’s Day of All Saints, a young Martín Silva de Choc meets Abby, an American student studying abroad at the Guatemalan language school for which he teaches. Abby’s long blonde braids and hypnotic laughter bring promise of a lovelier life in Chicago, but her presence is a stone in the water of his…
“Lisa Freeman’s Work Makes Me Angry; Or, The Children’s Crusade”: Lisa Freeman Catalog Essay for January 2018 Show by Jordan A. Rothacker

Lisa Freeman is an artist based in Athens, Georgia, who was born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1965. She has worked in the medium of painting, but recently her art has shifted to a focus on assemblage art using found objects. Drawn to discarded objects and photographs, Freeman explores the mystery of the forgotten, allowing the…
My Shadow Book by Maawaam, edited by Jordan A. Rothacker, reviewed by Jarrod Campbell

The purpose of a book can be something different from one person to the next. A fellow writer once told me that for him, a book can be a temporary escape from the drudgery of the real world. That was more important to him than delivering a message; provide diversion for one person and you…
“Wormwood,” a critical essay about the six-part Netflix miniseries by Toti O’Brien

Latin, Artemisia Absinth. Ancient British, Warmode. Wormwood is a bitter herb with medicinal properties, related to purification and cleansing. Hamlet mumbles its name in Act III, Scene II, during the play he has staged in order to upset King Claudius. The performance faithfully represents the crime of which he believes the latter is guilty. He…
Ragged; or, The Loveliest Lies of All, an anthropomorphic crime novel by Christopher Irvin, reviewed by Robert Young

Going into this book, I didn’t really know what to expect. I wasn’t familiar with the author’s other works, so what attracted me to this book was the premise alone: a feral twist on crime fiction, as the book’s back blurb informed me. I was intrigued. My interests were thoroughly piqued. I read onward. A…
Warewolff!, an archive by Gary J. Shipley, reviewed by Sean Oscar

I had to read Warewolff! in bursts. I found that sitting down with it for too long left me feeling hollowed out. Shipley is a skillful engineer of abominations, and there is certainly something rewarding in following the paths he sets before the reader, but be warned—this is an intense and difficult book which will…
Future Home of the Living God, a novel by Louise Erdrich, reviewed by Sarah Elsasser

I was surprised to hear that Louise Erdrich has a forthcoming novel and was even more surprised when I was handed the book; the image chosen for the cover a grainy, technologically cold image of an ultrasound with the overlaid title: Future Home of the Living God. A prolific writer—this is Erdrich’s twenty-first novel, in…
The Walmart Book of the Dead, a spellbook by Lucy Biederman, reviewed by James Ardis

When I turned sixteen, I started working as a stocker and cart pusher at my mother’s Walmart Neighborhood Market. She joined Walmart when I was twelve years old, a single mother trying to keep up with the skyrocketing rent in our Texas suburb. On morning shifts, my mom and I even worked together, scanning in…