Reviews
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Counterpart by Elizabeth Robinson
Marisa Siegel reviews Elizabeth Robinson’s Counterpart today in Rumpus Poetry.
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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 woman who was intimately connected with the world of science.…
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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 made by fools like me/ But only God can make…
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“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, and she is telling Humphrey Bogart, who is playing a…
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“What’s to Become of the Boy?” and “The Collected Stories,” by Heinrich Böll
In one of her letters, Flannery O’Connor noted that many Catholics end up suffering as much or more from the Church itself as from those who oppose it and its beliefs. This came to mind more than once as I…
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“Stingray Clapping” by Andrew Choate
Perhaps what is most thrilling about Stingray Clapping, Andrew Choate’s enigmatic collection of tonal, non-sequitur phrases, is that the book compels the reader to imagine the amoral absurdities of phrases not (yet) part of the cultural lexicon. In it, aphorisms…
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“American Mastodon” by Brad Ricca
Few poets choose to share poignant emotions with a cheeky smile and a sly wink. It is rare indeed when a poet manages to successfully blend comedy with genuine emotional insight, but that is exactly what Brad Ricca has accomplished…
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“Unruly Voices,” by Mark Kingwell
In his home country of Canada, Mark Kingwell is something of a celebrity philosopher—a public intellectual who, in addition to writing many readable books and winning teaching accolades, makes frequent television appearances and has a carefully crafted jeans-and-sneakers persona. He…
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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…