Paradise, Indiana by Bruce Snider
It’s gratifying that Bruce Snider dwells in the past without so much as a hint of nostalgia, that he offers up both the beauty and devastation of small-town Indiana.
Reviews
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How To Get Into The Twin Palms, by Karolina Waclawiak
If you’re drawn to this book, like I was, because of its cover–crimson daggers plunging through skulls–thinking you’ll get a drug lord tale à la Breaking Bad, turn back. How To…
Falcons on the Floor, by Justin Sirois
What is a novel about war supposed to do in 2012? Such works have all but lost their ancient claim to cultural significance. War is just another subject now, not the…
I Am Your Slave Now Do What I Say by Anthony Madrid
If this collection didn’t have one again questioning the origin and provenance of poetry (other than the intellect or empirical self), the poems would be getting short shrift.
Madness, Rack, and Honey by Mary Ruefle
Madness, Rack, and Honey is a gift from a rigorous intellect, unflinching critic, and a big old sloppy heart. Ruefle has created a work of poetry from the daunting task of writing about it.
Living, Thinking, Looking, by Siri Hustvedt
A particular essay in Siri Hustvedt’s new collection Living, Thinking, Looking encapsulates much of what is equally intriguing and frustrating about her as an essayist. Called “Outside the Mirror,” the…
Citizen by Aaron Shurin
Aaron Shurin writes piercingly lovely poetry that ‘s multidimensional and insists on being read aloud, though its eloquence is equally powerful on the page without sound...
The Secret of Evil, by Roberto Bolaño
In one of the stories in Roberto Bolaño’s new collection The Secret of Evil, the symbolist painter Gustave Moreau, whose arresting and beastly Jupiter and Seleme graces the American jacket…
People Who Eat Darkness, by Richard Lloyd Parry
I saw Lucie Blackman last week. She was walking down the street in Austin, Texas near the Congress Avenue Bridge. Then I saw her a few days later in the…
Across the Land and the Water by W. G. Sebald
In Sebald’s Across the Land and Water, the theme is clear. In these collections, we have named men and women (names) traveling, staying in hotels, unanchored, exiled and lost, seemingly forever, from their home.
The Agriculture Hall of Fame, by Andrew Malan Milward
In the early morning hours of August 21st, 1863, 26-year-old Captain William Quantrill led several hundred Confederate guerillas into the town of Lawrence, Kansas, a hotbed of abolitionist support, in…
Long Division by Alan Michael Parker
Parker’s voice is so singular and strong that I don’t question it, even when it relies on wit, and in return, Parker rewards me for following him when I least expect it.