Reviews Archives - Page 150 of 220

“Encyclopedia of a Life in Russia,” by José Manuel Prieto

In 1988, Czech novelist Milan Kundera published a personal dictionary of his “key words, problem words, words I love.” Not your average lexicon, “Sixty-three words” fuses history, philosophy, social-critique and…

Read

“Love Is a Canoe,” by Ben Schrank

“Love and marriage,” says the song, “go together like a horse and carriage.” Or do they? In his latest novel, Love Is a Canoe, Ben Schrank casts a critical eye…

Read

Read

My Scarlet Ways by Tanya Larkin

In age of poetry saturated with the irony and airy nonsense of the last phalanx of the grandchildren of the New York School, it is wonderfully refreshing to read Tanya…

Read

Read

Now Make an Altar by Amy Beeder

In Amy Beeder’s poetry, we are surrounded by the refuse and remains of the past: memories and photos of lost generations, the bones and fur of animals used to adorn…

Read

“Beamish Boy (I Am Not My Story): A Memoir of Recovery & Awakening,” by Albert Flynn DeSilver

The story of an artist’s search for identity, Beamish Boy opens with that classic trinity of WASP dysfunction: old money, alcohol abuse, and remote parents. The author’s earliest memories conjure…

Read

Read

In Beauty Bright by Gerald Stern

Having never read Gerald Stern’s poetry before, I took This Time: New and Selected Poems out from the library. The book won the National Book Award in 1998, and it…

Read

“Descanso for My Father,” by Harrison Candelaria Fletcher

Like the dreamlike shadowboxes of Joseph Cornell, Fletcher assembles scraps of imagery and inherited keepsakes into an enchanting quest to understand his family’s stories. Yet the abundant images with which Fletcher crafts his essays serve best as they buttress the unknown.

Read

“Summer of Hate,” by Chris Kraus

It’s appropriate to read Chris Kraus’s Summer of Hate in the middle of the winter. The novel is perfect for January and February, being very fast moving and set in…

Read

Read

Counterpart by Elizabeth Robinson

Marisa Siegel reviews Elizabeth Robinson’s Counterpart today in Rumpus Poetry.

Read

Read

Periodicity by Iris A. Law

Iris A. Law’s fearless debut work, Periodicity, operates through a unique structural conceit that lushly unfolds across the arc of the chapbook: each poem takes as its subject matter a…

Read

Read

Wikipedia Says It Will Pass by Diana Salier

Wikipedia is not to be trusted, at least not entirely. We all know this. (For a brief period in August of 2009 the first sentence of the “Trees” poet—“Poems are…

Read

“Shadow Man,” by Gabriel Blackwell

There’s a scene in The Maltese Falcon in which the actress Mary Astor is pretending to be a woman named Brigid O’Shaugnessy who has been pretending to someone named Ruth Wonderly,…

Read

Keep in Touch

The Rumpus in your Inbox!

Sign up for the weekly Rumpus