February 19, 2021
On Popular Longing by Natalie Shapero
Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon, 2021. 80 pages. $17.00. In Abbas Kiarostami’s 1997 film Taste of Cherry, a middle-aged man named Badii drives the dusty hills of Tehran in a […]
February 12, 2021
Blurring the Obvious: Bluebeard’s First Wife by Ha Seong-Nan
Translated by Janet Hong. Rochester, NY: Open Letter Books, 2020. 243 pages. $15.95. Though steadily published in South Korea for over twenty years, Ha Seong-Nan was not easily available to […]
February 5, 2021
“Mud Stuck to our Shoes”: On The Insistence of Harm by Fernando Valverde
Translated by Allen Josephs and Laura Juliet Wood. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2019. 144 pages. $16.95. The Insistence of Harm, the latest collection by the heralded Spanish poet […]
January 29, 2021
On Midwest Gothic by Laura Donnelly
Ashland, OH: Ashland Poetry Press, 2020. 84 pages. $15.95. Contemporary American poetry inspires us to plant the seeds of social justice, to grow the balms that heal trauma, to celebrate […]
January 22, 2021
The Poetry of the Line Cook: On Fred Shaw’s Scraping Away
Fort Lee, NJ: CavanKerry, 2020. 88 pages. $16.00. As COVID-19 continues to ravage our cultural institutions, I keep mourning the restaurant, that unique space of communality in which, at least for […]
January 15, 2021
On Machines of Another Era by Bess Winter
Boston, MA: Gold Wake Press, 2021. 170 pages. $16.95. Whether through Wikipedia rabbit holes, bibliomancy, or—most likely—somebody posting an anecdote on social media, a common source of literary inspiration these […]
January 8, 2021
“New with Loss”: Armen Davoudian’s Swan Song
Durham, NC: Bull City Press, 2020. 40 pages. $12.00. In my first encounter with Armen Davoudian, the poet was already saying goodbye. “Wake-Up Call,” an elegant sonnet that is both […]
December 18, 2020
Defying Gravity: On Be Holding by Ross Gay
Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020. 88 pages. $17.00. Note: After this book review was assigned and completed, Ross Gay joined the Kenyon Review as an Editor at Large. […]
December 18, 2020
“In a musical, thinking”: on Aditi Machado’s Emporium
New York, NY: Nightboat Books, 2020. 112 pages. $16.95. In a note published alongside an early version of her poem “rhapsody,” Aditi Machado reflects on her process of production: “I […]
December 11, 2020
On Runaway by Jorie Graham
New York, NY: Ecco/HarperCollins, 2020. 96 pages. $26.99. We don’t know how to pay attention anymore; so many outside sources compete for it. This sentiment seems everywhere, even sometimes in […]
December 4, 2020
What We Know When We Know It: A Review of Grasp by Sanjay Sarma with Luke Yoquinto
New York, NY: Doubleday/Random House, 2020. 352 pages. $28.95. Sanjay Sarma, Vice President for Open Learning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, describes two seemingly competing approaches to learning in […]
November 27, 2020
On Zoetrope by Kevin Latimer
Cleveland, OH: Grieveland, 2020. 89 pages. $20.00. In times that seem unimaginable, the imagination can become necessary to our survival—and to our understanding of death. Kevin Latimer’s debut collection of […]