Reviews
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Your Worst May Be My Best, or Vice Worse-A
Like the poems it contains, The Takeaway Bin as a whole is a response to something commonplace; one might even say it’s a book of copings with or responses to life.
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Color Plates
Built on a walk through a privately-owned museum, a four-chambered version of art, Color Plates is not an easily defnable book.
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Freak Flag Fly
[T]his is no Rand McNally; what makes the collection exciting is Iredell’s delicious sense of humor, his play with language and the dexterity with which he varies his voice.
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Behold My Clearance Discounts
Nick Demske operates with a kind of magnetic-yet-repulsive force, powerfully driven by various tensions of opposites.
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While the Women Are Sleeping
Doppelgängers, ghosts, and philosophical riddles about the nature of identity make up Javier Marías’ new collection of short fictions.
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The Heart of Nothing Much That Mattered
Alan Heathcock’s stories are linked by the town of Krafton—where missing teenagers hang from trees and all anyone wants to do is get out.
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When Tar Roads Came In Barefoot Age
Les Murray seems to want to make his experiences into some kind of shared history. In fact, this blurred line between personal memory and shared history is the spine to this body of poems.
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I Remember a Black Fog
Cedar Sigo avoids the usual pitfalls when exploring queer identity, minority identity and a political perspective thinking progressives can work with. He isn’t trite. He is never overwrought, and he brings a kinetic ardor to every line.
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The Diviner’s Tale
Morrow’s supple prose is grounded in lyricism, prose unafraid to give the reader both the forest and the trees. Bradford Morrow’s new novel, a feminist interpretation of fairy-tale tropes, explores the life of Cassandra: single-mother, teacher, dowser.
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The Air in the Cages is Dust
One of the great strengths of this book is Flynn’s refusal to luxuriate in self-importance. Instead, he displays a consistent awareness that the poetry of war is not war itself, but dwells in the incorporeal rather than the actual.
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Like an Amputee’s Phantom Itch
Whether you’re an admirer or a stranger to her work, Rachel McKibbens awakens and haunts with selfless honesty.
