“The Yellow Birds,” by Kevin Powers
The innocuous title of Kevin Powers’ debut novel The Yellow Birds is a reference to a military marching cadence. In its lyrics, as anyone who served in the military in recent decades…
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“Waxwings” by Daniel Nathan Terry
Daniel Nathan Terry’s second collection of verse, Waxwings, opens with “Scarecrow,” an address to the poem’s namesake from its creator: “Scare-crow crafter, burlap-tailor, / black-eye smudger, when I’m done, /…
Dwarf by Tiffanie DiDonato
While born with diastrophic displaysia, a rare form of dwarfism causing short stature, joint deformities, and very short extremities, Tiffanie does not allow the world to define her.
“Book of Dog” by Cleopatra Mathis
The domesticated dog, evolved 15,000 years ago from gray wolves, is not a reliquary of slavish dependence in Book of Dog, Cleopatra Mathis’ seventh collection, nor is it a token…
“Melancholia (An Essay)” by Kristina Marie Darling
Kristina Marie Darling’s wonderful new book of poems, Melancholia (An Essay)—her fourth—is more than a collection of abandoned footnotes and glossaries (poetic constructs she has been mastering since Night Songs),…
“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…
“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 has…
“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…