Reviews
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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…
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Pizza with Anarchies: “Be Gay Do Crime”: Sixteen Stories of Queer Chaos
The title is a slogan that’s been floating around a while: “Be gay. Do crime.” Or, “crimes,” plural, if you go from the graffiti credited with the slogan’s origin. It’s associated with anarchism.
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A Space of Her Own
Marcia LeBeau’s debut collection, A Curious Hunger, is a powerful testament to the unabashed wholeness of womanhood—and an assertion that our culture, where power skews cis male, needs to make space for it. All of it. This is a big…
