May 8, 2020
“This Animate Dust”: Carol Muske-Dukes’s Visceral Poetics
Blue Rose. Carol Muske-Dukes. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2018. 80 pages. $18.00. In Blue Rose, her ninth book of poems, Carol Muske-Dukes writes, “I am near the end of […]
May 1, 2020
“but what line of sight leads to revelation?”: On Sight Lines by Arthur Sze
Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2019. 80 pages. $16.00. A team of scientists, primarily from China, recently discovered that one wild silkworm species’ silk, whose threads are made up […]
May 1, 2020
On Catechesis by Lindsay Lusby
Salt Lake City, UT: The University of Utah Press, 2019. 64 pages. $14.95. Lindsay Lusby’s Catechesis immediately thrusts the reader into the new landscape of the post-pastoral. This designation on […]
April 24, 2020
“What Else is Beautiful”: The Narratives Refused by Aria Aber’s Hard Damage
Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2019. 126 pgs. $17.95. In Aria Aber’s debut poetry collection, Hard Damage, being American equates to walking by cow pastures poisoned “psychedelic blue.” The […]
April 17, 2020
Poetry in the Public Square: Tommy Pico’s Feed
Portland, OR: Tin House Books, 2019. 78 pages. $15.95. For someone who spends less and less time on Twitter, I think about Twitter a lot. Part of which is Trump’s […]
April 17, 2020
On Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh
New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019. 320 pages. $27.00. The myths of our ancient history are riddled with strange natural occurrences. The storms that blew Odysseus off course, […]
April 10, 2020
“Feeling Heard” in Topeka: On Ben Lerner’s The Topeka School
New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019. 304 pages. $27.00. In the 1930s, a Harvard psychology undergrad, Cecilia Roberts, observed her son creating stories from the magazine photos he […]
April 3, 2020
Kissification and its Consequences: On Ann Townsend’s Dear Delinquent
Louisville, KY: Sarabande Books, 2019. 80 pages. $15.95. The title of Ann Townsend’s playful, melancholic third collection, Dear Delinquent, is taken from the pet name Edna St. Vincent Millay deployed […]
April 3, 2020
“I live in the museum of / everyday life”: On Mary Ruefle’s Dunce
Seattle, WA: Wave Books, 2019. 104 pages. $25.00. Anyone (which is most of us) who has read Mary Ruefle’s oeuvre of work would think that her masterful, associative poems exhibit […]
March 27, 2020
“Fear is the Fundamental Law”: On Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming by László Krasznahorkai
Translated by Ottilie Mulzet. New York, NY: New Directions, 2019. 576 pages. $29.95. How ready are you for the end of the world? I’m asking not about physical readiness, doomsday […]
March 24, 2020
March 2020 Micro-Reviews
Shimon Adaf. Aviva-No. Trans. Yael Segalovitz. Alice James Books, 2019. 135 pages. $16.95. Shimon Adaf’s third book of poetry, Aviva-No, with its stunning translation into English by Yael Segalovitz, is […]
March 20, 2020
On A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio
Translated by Ann Goldstein. New York, NY: Europa Editions, 2019. 176 pages. $16.00. In the gripping new Italian novel in translation A Girl Returned, a young girl’s adoptive parents suddenly […]