November 23, 2018
A Way of Containing the Stasis: On Junk by Tommy Pico
Portland, OR and New York, NY: Tin House, 2018. 72 pages. $26.00. Since 2016, Tommy Pico has published three book-length poems—IRL, Nature Poem, and now his newest, the stunning Junk. […]
November 23, 2018
On Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers
New York, NY: Viking Press, 2018. 432 pages. $27.00. “Time travel is so easy! It’s devastatingly easy! All you have to do is live long enough!” These are the words […]
November 16, 2018
“Two Theatres:” A Review of Amy Fusselman’s Idiophone
Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press, 2018. 132 pages. $16.95. It is not until page sixteen of Idiophone, Amy Fusselman’s latest work of nonfiction, that she defines the title: a percussion […]
November 9, 2018
Love Is a Powerful Drug: On Tomb Song by Julián Herbert
Translated by Christina MacSweeney. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2018. 224 pages. $16.00. Though the term has existed since the late 1970s, “autofiction” is experiencing a renaissance in contemporary literature thanks […]
November 9, 2018
On The Book of Ephraim by James Merrill
Annotated and introduced by Stephen Yenser. New York, NY: Knopf, 2018. 216 pages. $18.00. The main plot of The Book of Ephraim—the first third of The Changing Light at Sandover, […]
November 2, 2018
On The Shakespeare Requirement by Julie Schumacher
New York, NY: Doubleday, 2018. 320 pages. $25.95. For every person who agrees with something you take as gospel, there are at least two who don’t, and a decent number […]
October 26, 2018
On House of McQueen by Valerie Wallace
New York, NY: Four Way Books, 2018. 66 pages. $15.95. In House of McQueen, her debut collection, Valerie Wallace is a master of contents under pressure. In predominantly short-lined, strophic […]
October 26, 2018
On A View of the Empire at Sunset by Caryl Phillips
New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018. 336 pages. $26.00. Caryl Phillips’s recently published novel A View of the Empire at Sunset—an imaginative retelling of the early twentieth-century […]
October 19, 2018
I Search Myself and Sing Myself: On T.R. Hummer’s After the Afterlife
Cincinnati, OH: Acre Books, 2017. 72 pages. $16.00. “You can’t step into the same river twice,” Heraclitus tells us, a famous bit of philosophizing that feels eerily relevant today. Facebook’s […]
October 12, 2018
On The Thin Wall by Martha Rhodes
Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017. 56 pages. $15.95. The title of Martha Rhodes’s fifth poetry collection, The Thin Wall, indicates you are entering an unsteady world. Thin walls […]
October 12, 2018
Heather Derr-Smith, Desire, & the Duende
Thrust. Heather Derr-Smith. New York, NY: Persea, 2017. 96 pages. $15.95. The woman levitated over Barcelona. She had a rifle for a clavicle. Her eyes were two black star dogs […]
October 5, 2018
Anne Barngrover’s Brazen Creature: Southern Masculinities & the Violence of Spectacle
Akron, OH: The University of Akron Press, 2018. 72 pages. $15.95. In his recent article, William Michael Dickey notes that the “ability to punish via the gaze” is quite powerful, […]