January 20, 2017
On Chaos Theories by Elizabeth Hazen
Bethesda, MD: Alan Squire Publishing, 2016. 72 pages. $20.00. Elizabeth Hazen’s dazzling first book of poems, Chaos Theories, reminds us of the long history of poets who take on science […]
January 13, 2017
Everything Goes: On Robyn Schiff’s A Woman of Property
New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2016. 96 pages. $20.00. “Born so late in natural / history, I look after everything,” Robyn Schiff declares in A Woman of Property, her breathtaking […]
January 13, 2017
“Or my memory was your memory”: Vi Khi Nao’s The Old Philosopher
New York, NY: Nightboat Books, 2016. 80 pages. $15.95. There is a sense when reading The Old Philosopher that no one takes more pleasure in writing poems these days than […]
January 6, 2017
On Little Labors by Rivka Galchen
New York, NY: New Directions, 2016. 136 pages. $16.95. As any new mother or father will tell you, parenthood is a complicated business. There are undeniable joys for adults susceptible […]
January 6, 2017
Both Present and Close: Reginald Dwayne Betts’s Bastards of the Reagan Era
New York, NY: Four Way Books, 2015. 72 pages. $15.95. In the case of his own life, Betts insists on the adage that the personal is political. In a collection […]
January 3, 2017
Representative Men
From the Jan/Feb 2017 issue of the Kenyon Review Bastards of the Reagan Era. Reginald Dwayne Betts. Four Way Books, 2015. 72 pp. $15.95. The Orchard Green and Every Color. […]
December 19, 2016
December Micro-Reviews
Cynthia Manick. Blue Hallelujahs. Black Lawrence Press, 2016. 76 pgs. $15.95. In Blue Hallelujahs Cynthia Manick explores the weight of generational history through personal narrative. The speaker recalls events within […]
December 19, 2016
December 2016 Micro-Reviews
Cynthia Manick. Blue Hallelujahs. Black Lawrence Press, 2016. 76 pgs. $15.95. In Blue Hallelujahs Cynthia Manick explores the weight of generational history through personal narrative. The speaker recalls events within […]
December 16, 2016
On Debbie Graber’s Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday
Los Angeles, CA: The Unnamed Press, 2016. 147 pages. $14.99. Seldom—too seldom—do literary short stories make me laugh. In my nine-year tenure as series editor for the Flannery O’Connor Award […]
December 16, 2016
An Iranian Tsvetaeva
Mirror of Dew: The Poetry of Ālam-Tāj Zhāle Qā’em-Maqāmi. Translated with commentary by Asghar Seyed-Gohrab. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2014. 224 pages. $24.95. Scholars of Persian poetry have had the […]
December 9, 2016
The Mathematics of History: On Michèle Audin’s One Hundred Twenty-One Days
Trans. Christiana Hills. Dallas, TX: Deep Vellum Publishing, 2016. 200 pages. $14.95. In 1960, the writer Raymond Queneau and the engineer François Le Lionnais founded Ouvroir de littérature potentielle (“workshop […]
December 9, 2016
Life as Dark Broth: Quiet Creature on the Corner by João Gilberto Noll
Trans. Adam Morris. San Francisco, CA: Two Lines Press, 2016. 120 pages. $9.95. It’s always nice to know just what a celebrated author thinks about life, and when he opens […]