The Dead Man’s Back Arches
The collection works as poetic biography and Whitmanesque dialogue, and this approach and its repetitions become irresistibly hypnotic.
Reviews
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Wings Wands Stars Tulle
These poems have all the instinct and fangs of a canine, and the plush, electric fur of a wolf: the intensity and sheer quality of workmanship in the poems is…
The Moon Rises
Glen Duncan’s new novel The Last Werewolf is sophisticated and horrifying and elegant and not for Young Adult readers, who would need a thesaurus, a history tutor and sedation.
To the Language of Doves
Darwish’s identity (and the Palestinian identity) has been, at least partly, developed in exile. Darwish writes: “I am absence./ The heavenly and the expelled.” Here he speaks not only for…
Emerging Empathy
In The Chairs Are Where the People Go, Shelia Heti and Misha Glouberman explore all topics that Glouberman cares about, including feeling like a fraud, seeing John Zorn play Cobra,…
Slashed Narcissi, Drilled Stone
In physics terms, the poetry world is underground “all the way down,” so Influence lurks in each sea cave like a bastard eel, recharging in darkness, awaiting his next dinner…
Kids Kill Art or Art Kills Kids
With a unique family led by performance artist parents, Kevin Wilson’s The Family Fang warns of the dangers of conflating art and life.
The Cows in The Cows
Lydia Davis’s new chapbook The Cows documents the lives of her neighbor’s cows.
More Horses Than We Need
Perspective and introspection are plentiful in this fine retrospective collection, but Gallagher doesn’t fully see now. She speculates profoundly and eloquently, metaphysically — never astro/quantum physically, as if from any…
Hello, Happy Homeland
Ana Menendez’s new collection of short fiction, Adios, Happy Homeland, weaves together stories from diverse Cuban voices that all confront the history and lived reality of their conflicted homeland.
A Journey With Two Maps
Becoming a Woman Poet is brisk, each indicator of geography reinforcing the urge to break barriers.
By Any Other Name
Like Freedom, Keith Scribner’s third book, The Oregon Experiment, is hugely ambitious, decidedly modern, distinctly American novel, with complicated family dynamics, and remarkable depth of character and psychological nuance.