Reviews
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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, / crows mistake you for a man.” By the end of…
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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.
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“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 of the bourgeois middle-class’s presumed benignity. It is as necessary…
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“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), it is a history composed entirely of an ex-lover’s curios—a…
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“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 full-length portrait of the title character shows a muscular man…
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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 top candidate; he finished his graduate work at a respectable,…
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“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 included photographs from 1973 of Tranströmer and his wife at…
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“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…
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“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 history in our daily lives. While her third collection maintains…
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“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 “wasting God’s seed.” Even thoughts could be dangerous, as what’s…
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“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) initially believe or anticipate. At the onset, Sweet Tooth’s essence appears…
