November 20, 2020
On That Time of Year by Marie NDiaye
Translated by Jordan Stump. San Francisco, CA: Two Lines Press, 2020. 128 pages. $19.95. Marie NDiaye’s latest novel to be translated, That Time of Year, appears to be a relatively […]
November 13, 2020
On Shrapnel Maps by Philip Metres
Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon, 2020. 170 pages. $20.00. Growing up, two of my best friends lived next door to each other. We’ve since grown and moved away, but the […]
November 6, 2020
On Jill Osier’s The Solace is Not the Lullaby
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020. 80 pages. $20.00. Jill Osier’s The Solace is Not the Lullaby, winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, begins the same way—with […]
October 30, 2020
On Let It Be Broke by Ed Pavlić
New York, NY: Four Way Books, 2020. 134 pages. $16.95. Ed Pavlić is driving I-85 through South Carolina in a rainstorm when he hears the NPR report of yet another […]
October 23, 2020
“You had me at emo”: A Review of Fablesque by Anna Maria Hong
North Adams, MA: Tupelo Press, 2020. 69 pages. $17.95. Aimee Nezhukumatathil chose Fablesque by Anna Maria Hong for Tupelo Press’s Berkshire Prize well before the mise en abyme of 2020, […]
October 16, 2020
Cut Joke: Pierrot’s Fingernails by Kit Schluter
Marfa, TX: Canarium Books, 2020. 96 pages. $17.00. A game is something that can be described from the outside, and with as much intelligence as you like, but whose values, […]
October 9, 2020
“Be no longer resemblance”: Warring the blood in Thabile Makue’s ‘mamaseko
Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2020. 144 pages. $18.00. When the blood of your ancestry—that same which flows within—has been contaminated, harboring life alongside violence and disorder, there may […]
October 9, 2020
On Gravity Assist by Martha Silano
Ardmore, PA: Saturnalia Books, 2019. 104 pages. $16.00. Gravity Assist, Martha Silano’s fifth book of poetry, launches into space and reports back on life on earth from a unique vantage […]
October 2, 2020
Tear down the Icons and Raise the Idols: On Juan Cárdenas’s Ornamental
Translated by Lizzie Davis. Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press, 2020. 144 pages. $16.95. On Good Friday 1519, Hernán Cortés and his men disembarked onto the shores of Chalchihuecan in the […]
September 28, 2020
September 2020 Micro-Reviews, Part 2
For #TranslationMonth, here’s part 2 of what’s been an unprecedented number of micro-reviews of poetry in translation. #KRTranslates. —KH Paul Celan. Memory Rose into Threshold Speech: The Collected Earlier Poetry: […]
September 25, 2020
Alphabets of Immigration: On Marina Blitshteyn’s Two Hunters and Marwa Helal’s Invasive Species
Marina Blitshteyn. Two Hunters. Litchfield, CT: Argos Books, 2019. 112 pages. $16.00. Marwa Helal. Invasive Species. New York, NY: Nightboat Books, 2019. 144 pages. $16.95. Coming to America, returning to […]
September 18, 2020
On Suitor by Joshua Rivkin
Pasadena, CA: Red Hen Press, 2020. 88 pages. $16.95. In the first of two envois that appear in Joshua Rivkin’s Suitor, a speaker defines the word that gives the collection […]