Survival and Hope: Akwaeke Emezi’s You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
You Made A Fool organically makes the argument that friendships can be just as important and fulfilling as romantic relationships.
Reviews
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History Is Fluid: R.F. Kuang’s Babel
In Babel, language is a resource stolen from the mouths of native speakers.
Sketch Book Reviews: A Line in the World by Dorthe Nors
While this book is about a tiny part of the world, it's universal in its particularity—a must-read for anyone who loves lyric essays.
Daydreams of Blackness: Some of Them Will Carry Me by Giada Scodellaro
Scodellaro’s characters have autonomy, know their comforts and desires, and find space and safety in the corners of forgotten places. They grieve on countertops, chewing ice and waiting for the return of a lover who has left for another.
Far from Usual and Better for It: The Layered Poetics of Allison Blevins’s Slowly/Suddenly
Slowly/Suddenly is presented as a diptych in the Table of Contents, perhaps mirroring Blevins’s commitments to other forms of art, but her poems’ progression from Part I to Part II is not a linear narrative, not a Before & After.
Take a Good Look: Lisa Taddeo’s Ghost Lover
"Crystal" was really her name. She was always as gentle as she could be. I am grateful to her for that.
How the World Happens to Us: Lucy Ives’ Life Is Everywhere
Lucy Ives has proven herself to be one of our greatest under-the-radar geniuses, but an achievement like Life Is Everywhere demands attention. The systems have long been in place, but everyone will see them now.
Escaping the Infinite: An Omnibus Review of Four Contemporary Works of Poetry
So everything should be very clear.
Finding Land: Audrey Magee’s The Colony
“When you look at the colonial system, one of the things they want to eradicate is the native language, because they don’t understand what’s going on and they can’t control it.”
The Pastoral Novel in Chaos: Daisy Hildyard’s Emergency
. . . to witness the world is always to participate in it, to make choices about what to see and what to ignore, and also to be worked upon by forces of differing scales.
Sketch Book Reviews: Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World
EMBRACE FEARLESSLY THE BURNING EARTH . . . is a quintessential Barry Lopez book. It is a clarion call to lovers of the earth, but one full of hope and optimism. This is exactly the kind of book we should all be reading right now.
Love in and Loving Lisa Dordal’s Water Lessons
If I didn’t already write poems, Lisa Dordal’s Water Lessons would make me want to write them.