A Perfect Sketch of a Moment: Janet Malcolm’s Still Pictures
"Memory is not a journalist's tool. Memory glimmers and hints, but shows nothing sharply or clear."
Reviews
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Female Trouble: Cookie Mueller’s Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black
If you want to evoke the idea of who someone really is, start by showing us what they see.
The No-Man’s Land Between Art and Self: Seth Rogoff’s The Kirschbaum Lectures
We look for ourselves in literature—for comfort or for guidance—but the page rarely provides a clean mirror.
Sketch Book Reviews: Poetry Unbound
I think when things in the world seem particularly bad/sad/awful, poetry can add a little light
The Sound of Home: Sonorous Desert by Kim Haines-Eitzen
. . . if we open our ears . . . we might even find ourselves feeling truly home
Waking Up at the Wake: Desire, Death, and Disruption in A Shiver in the Leaves
When I consider a shiver in the leaves, my mind fares in two directions: One is back to my first-time experience with psilocybin, shocked at how the fig leaves hung as if shivering . . . and the other is back through American history . . .
Critical Attachment to Geniuses: Ada Calhoun’s Also A Poet
. . . how to simultaneously develop a deep curiosity about cultural icons and maintain a critical distance from them . . .
The Myriad Conflagrations of our Times: Chloe N. Clark’s Patterns of Orbit
In this collection, the reader can slipstream from space shuttle to submarine, from Grimm to Goldilocks to Charybdis, because a cautionary tale that’s never heeded is never out of date . . .
Travels in Paradise: Pico Iyer’s The Half Known Life
To try and gain a level of peace amidst the disappointment and chaos of the world is perhaps the only real paradise.
Language as Possibility: Renee Gladman’s Plans for Sentences
. . . think of Gladman’s work as engaging the imagination the way an architect approaches three-dimensional space with a two-dimensional blueprint.
Learning from Grief: Claudia Putnam’s Double Negative
Among the meanings of Claudia Putnam’s cryptic title is a mathematical one, based on the lower left quadrant of graphs; it is a meaning that she chooses, explicates, and explores…