Reviews
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Procrastistitching and Learning Who You Are
This little collection of essays made me want to sew. And knit. And do a bit of embroidery. It made me want to slow down, and create the world I want to live in.
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Gaar Adams’ “ Guest Privileges Deconstructs” “Isn’t it Harder There?” for LGBTQ+ People in the Gulf
To witness the bureaucracy and legalities that don’t stop queer and trans people from simply existing is a witnessing worth entering into.
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The Unkindness of Time: Elaine Sexton’s “Site Specific: New and Selected Poems”
One minute we are on a coastal road; the next we share quiet thoughts in a country house, while looking at an old screen door which conjures up temporal family memories. At another moment we are watching a jet trail
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Inquiry, Lineage, & Archive: A Review of Remica Bingham-Risher’s Room Swept Home
Each line urges its own set of questions. How to reconcile being an “unplanned letter” — is this future-telling, or regret, or hope? [T]heir stone-clad letters juxtaposed against familial flesh and blood bring to mind stone’s durability across time, a…
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And the Now: on “Things in Nature Merely Grow” by Yiyun Li
“The problem: What if the tragedy has no end point? In Yiyun Li’s latest memoir Things in Nature Merely Grow, the author spurns the term “grief” and its attachment to endings. For Li, the definition of grief is tied to…
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Buddhist in a Corvette: On Richard Siken’s Third Transformation
Richard Siken’s virtuoso third collection, I Do Know Some Things, Copper Canyon Press 2025, arrives as a righteous heir of Edson’s vision. The book, bloated with human truth and stripped of pretense, offers black comedy, lyrical excavation, and a persistent,…
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Unearthing the Portrait of an Artist: A review of Brent Ameneyro’s “A Face Out of Clay”
The poet is not a singularity and is overwhelmingly in the world, among others, even when they are in a room with the windows shut to keep out the noise. Ameneyro’s most profound moments emerge when he shifts from singular…
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Scout Finch Will Outlive Us All: Harper Lee’s “The Land of Sweet Forever”
… there’s no new work here, only archives with a pretty cover
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Miracle of the Ordinary: A Review of Ada Limon’s “Startlement”
Ada’s storytelling can be painstakingly slow and suspenseful, weaving through multiple plots and timelines. But it never fails to engage.
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The Shackles of Crime: John J. Lennon’s “The Tragedy of True Crime”
There are more sides to a person than a prison sentence can reveal.
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The Object of Our Attention: Marisa Meltzer’s ‘It Girl’
…what is it? And can it explain why Birkin’s life is the one we are currently examining, when there are so many others out there who likewise deserve to be “at the center of [their] own narrative”?
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On Dante Alighieri’s ‘Paradiso,’ a new translation by Mary Jo Bang
Mary Jo Bang’s translation of Dante Allighieri’s Paradiso by Copper Canyon Press, 2025 displays the enduring power of this classic work of Western literature. For such an old text, a contemporary reader might be surprised by Paradiso’s continuing relevance. Dante…