October 28, 2016
On The Bridge by Mary Austin Speaker
Bristol, UK: Shearsman Books, 2015. 88 pages. $18.00. Mary Austin Speaker’s second full-length book, The Bridge, is a delightfully surrealistic collection of prismatic, mind-driven poems which dazzle and surprise for […]
October 28, 2016
A Genre beyond Gender: Anne Garréta’s Sphinx
Translated from French by Emma Ramadan. Dallas, TX: Deep Vellum Publishing, 2015. 152 pages. $14.95. Alan Turing’s artificial intelligence test stems from a lesser-known imitation game involving three players: a […]
October 21, 2016
On Everything I Found on the Beach by Cynan Jones
Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press, 2016. 248 pages. $15.95. Economic despair is hardly a new phenomenon. It’s an affliction that affects millions, including the protagonists of Everything I Found on […]
October 21, 2016
The Open Indefinite: On Brian Blanchfield’s Proxies
Callicoon, NY: Nightboat Books, 2016. 184 pages. $15.95. The reviewer of Brian Blanchfield’s new book, Proxies: Essays Near Knowing, may be tempted to try the compositional constraints Blanchfield outlines in […]
October 14, 2016
Slipped Boundaries, Infinite Lives: The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck
Translated by Susan Bernofsky. New York, NY: New Directions Press, 2014. 239 pages. $23.95. One needs courage to emerge from a Jenny Erpenbeck novel merely stirred to deeper contemplation and […]
October 14, 2016
With Bloody Precision: Caren Beilin’s The University of Pennsylvania
Mesilla Park, NM: Noemi Press, 2014. 83 pages. $15.00. In Caren Beilin’s novel The University of Pennsylvania, the place is no paradise. The reputation behind the name welcomes us into […]
October 7, 2016
Lost in Time and Space: The Complete Stories of Clarice Lispector
New York, NY: New Directions, 2015. 640 pages. $28.95. Few people seem to be aware that Clarice Lispector ever existed, even fewer seem to be aware that she was one […]
October 7, 2016
On Michael Robins’s In Memory of Brilliance & Value
Ardmore, PA: Saturnalia Books, 2015. 80 pages. $15.00. Imagine driving with a windshield splintered by hailstones, how the world presented would skitter from sightline to sightline: a tree would have […]