Reviews
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Butch Geography by Stacey Waite
Of all the stunning epigraphs Stacey Waite includes in Butch Geography—insights from William Carlos Williams and Judith Butler and Virginia Woolf—the most memorable and significant to me is the Japanese proverb which marks the second of the book’s four sections:…
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“Both Flesh and Not,” by David Foster Wallace
The ferocity with which scholars, writers, fans, and cultural critics explicate the legacy of David Foster Wallace, or even that a legacy is thought to already exist at all, strikes me as a bit absurd, if inevitable.
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Murder Ballad by Jane Springer
Because a book of poetry can do anything, I am going to propose that Jane Springer’s Murder Ballad open a hole in the Mississippi River. An impossible hole. Because the poems are going to vacate and fill in the space…
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Orphan Hours by Stanley Plumly
Like a blue jay, thrush, or white-chested robin, darting in last light into leaves, twigs, or sky – after the rain, say, but before evening falls, when dark follows a darkening, Stanley Plumly’s Orphan Hours shows us moments rife with…
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Dialogos: Paired Poems in Translation by George Kalogeris
I Scene: The hilltop retreat of the ascetic Skepticus, high above the City. Small, uneven open space amid rocks, center. A rocky path leads upstage left, and, eventually, down the hill. Entrance to a small cave downstage center right. Enter…
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There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister’s Husband, and He Hanged Himself: Love Stories by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s stories are not about dissidents or defectors. They are about something far more dangerous to the Soviet ideal: ordinary people.
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“Let Me Clear My Throat: Essays,” by Elena Passarello
Confession: I spend a lot of time hanging out in a dive piano bar in Oakland, and I can just imagine Elena Passarello, author of a quality new collection of essays about the human voice, walking in.
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Poets Beyond the Barricade by Dale M Smith
In Washington, D. C. many years ago, Denise Levertov took questions after a reading and was asked if poets were obligated to protest with poetry when their government was acting illegally or immorally. Levertov replied that of course poets should…
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Homebodies by Sarah Jane Sloat
If you open your hands to hold Homebodies, a chapbook of poems by Sarah J. Sloat, you find much about the book itself that makes the act feel personal, private. You’re holding paper and ribbon (the chapbook is bound by…
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“Open Heart,” by Elie Wiesel
When eighty-two-year-old Elie Wiesel was told he needed emergency heart surgery he was surprised rather than afraid.
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Loud Dreaming in a Quiet Room by Betsy Wheeler
Betsy Wheeler’s Loud Dreaming in a Quiet Room has sort of undone me for the month and a half I’ve spent with it, reading it or letting it hang over to the side and reverbrate while I try ways through…
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“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 autobiography, ingeniously invigorating a literary form often lumped with the…