Reviews
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“Fancy Clapping” by Mark D. Dunn
How many contemporary Canadian poets can I name? Not many, which makes me feel stupid, especially since the books I have read by Canadian writers are so good. Mark Dunn is one of those writers. He’s also an accomplished singer-songwriter…
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“Things That Are,” by Amy Leach
Things That Are by Amy Leach possesses the whimsical wordplay and wonder of a Victorian fairytale. Through a series of sparkling essays, Leach enthusiastically explores the oddities of all things great and small in the universe, from lilies to honey…
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“Life Goes On,” by Hans Keilson
In late 1928, the left-wing playwright Friedrich Wolf wrote, “Let’s hope 1929 brings us plenty of struggle, friction, and sparks.” He got his wish. In 1929, the U.S. stock market crashed. Within weeks, the U.S. cut off the flow of…
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“Many Ways to Say It” by Eva Saulitis
In her first book of poetry, naturalist and award-winning essayist Eva Saulitis explores the web of connections between nature, science, language, and the continually opening territory of the self, where all of those topographies intersect and the individual must navigate…
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“Collected Poems” by Jack Kerouac
You know Jack Kerouac. Everyone knows Jack Kerouac. Father of the Beat generation, though he disliked that label, author of the free thinkers bible On the Road, culture maker, lover of the mad, and general all around badass. He receives…
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“Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me,” by Karen Swallow Prior
It is a happy accident that I picked up Karen Swallow Prior’s Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me right after I had finished Norman Wirzba’s Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating: both ask us to reconsider the spiritual…
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“Babel’s Moon” by Brandon Som
In the 2000 Chinese film, In the Mood for Love, an ancient story is shared that portends to secrets: if you have a burning secret, you must take it to the top a mountain.
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“To Keep Love Blurry” by Craig Morgan Teicher
Craig Morgan Teicher’s third collection To Keep Love Blurry calls attention to our formal and confessional roots in giants such as Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and Robert Frost. Teicher’s wife, poet Brenda Shaughnessy (after whom he titled his first collection…
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Our Andromeda by Brenda Shaughnessy
In her new collection, Our Andromeda, Brenda Shaughnessy presents emotions at their most bare in experiences both familiar and alien—and alien sometimes in a literal sense as the speakers regularly shuttle to and from the Andromeda Galaxy, the galaxy closest…
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Charms Against Lightning by James Arthur
The debut collection of poetry might just deserve its own taxon in the categorizing of literary contributions. One can almost picture beneath the heading of ‘Debuts’ a series of subheadings such as ‘Showed Great Promise Only at First,’ ‘Terrible Poetry…
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“The Doctor’s Wife,” by Luis Jaramillo
Luis Jaramillo’s The Doctor’s Wife is a collection of short stories that reads saga captured in tableaux. This is a family narrative in 91 arresting and varied compositions halved into two parts, in which our narrator is the grandson of…
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“With the Animals,” by Noelle Revaz
Paul, the narrator and subject of Noëlle Revaz’s With the Animals, is a rustic Swiss farmer with strong opinions but a weak intellect; he is a man of formidable emotion but has a rather small heart, metaphorically speaking. The book…