Reviews
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“My Poets” by Maureen McLane
Maureen McLane has published two daring, original collections of poetry, and a book called Balladeering, Minstrelsy, and the Making of British Romantic Poetry, from Cambridge University Press. Balladeering, with sometimes sluggish, academic prose, is worth effort for anyone wishing greater…
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“Pure,” by Andrew Miller
The central question of Andrew Miller’s novel Pure, set in Louis XVI’s pre-revolutionary France, mirrors that of the recent American presidential election—“yes on progress, but at what cost?”
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“The Lamp With Wings” by M. A. Vizsolyi
Love puts a lot of pressure on people to do things with each other. There are a lot of conditions to saying “I love you.” You have to act love out in the world, and it’s a big world, especially…
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“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 might know, a peaceful bird is lured into a room…
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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,…
