“Lionel Asbo: State of England,” by Martin Amis
Martin Amis’s latest novel Lionel Asbo is a shallow book that sparkles with moments of profundity. The farcical content is evident from the cover of its British edition where a…
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“The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction,” Edited by Dinty W. Moore
A few years ago, I interviewed a new PhD in political science for a job at the university where I teach. He was a bit younger than me, and a…
“Baltics” by Tomas Tranströmer
Tomas Tranströmer’s Baltics, a long poem, first appeared in 1974, but this time around Samuel Charters has added a new afterword to his original translation, and his wife Ann Charters…
“The Map of the System of Human Knowledge,” by James Tadd Adcox
It is the most human tendency to impose order and organization where there is none, conjure sense out of nothingness, and James Tadd Adcox submits to this urge in The Map of the System of Human Knowledge. As a former student of linguistics (a discipline that gleefully embraces classification systems) and a current student of geography (a discipline that reaches its highest expression in the map), I came to The Map of the System of Human Knowledge with special interest.
“The Apothecary’s Heir” by Julianne Buchsbaum
A winning selection in the 2011 National Poetry Series, Julianne Buchsbaum’s The Apothecary’s Heir interrogates the wildness of nature, the decadence of urban sprawl, and the necessity of myth and…
“The Lost Episodes of Revie Bryson,” by Bryan Furuness
I went to Catholic school, damn it. They guilted me good and thick. In junior high, the young priest who led the boys’ sex ed talk referred to masturbation as…
“Sweet Tooth,” by Ian McEwan
Page-turner thrillers of all stripes trade on nimbly accelerating plot mechanics and narrative sleights-of-hand that highlight the gap between what eventually transpires and what readers (and, often, the intrepid hero)…
“As Long As Trees Last” by Hoa Nguyen
Seattle’s renowned independent press, Wave Books, recently published Hoa Nguyen’s third full-length collection of poems, As Long As Trees Last. In it, Nguyen once again dares to experiment with form,…
“Unbuilt Projects,” by Paul Lisicky
“It is hard work to be dead,” writes Paul Lisicky, referring to his mom. “She should have been in training for this, instead of putting her feet up in front…
“50 American Plays” by Matthew and Michael Dickman
I’ve visited exactly half of the states that make up our federal constitutional republic. I’m counting states that I’ve lived in, vacationed in, or merely driven through. Some of the…
The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets by Diana Wagman
The recent glut of apocalyptic novels has encouraged readers’ desires to become armchair spectators to doom. Our front-row seats at the end-of-days enable us to cheer for the scrappy protagonist…
“Mortality,” by Christopher Hitchens
An amorphous aura resonates around authors we discover on our own. Before we hear of their fame and talent, before everyone recommends their book as a “must read” we find…