Elegant Trash
In his second book, Rob Sheffield uses ‘80s pop to explore adolescent memories, complex emotions, and the woes of being the de facto “gay friend.”
Reviews
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A Gap in a Two-Way Mirror
As a chapbook, Narcissus Resists works. Across nineteen poems, a conceit such as this can get old, but Hittinger keeps his book compelling and engaging.
Floating in a Most Peculiar Way
In Packing for Mars, Mary Roach matches her curiosity and humor against government secrecy, drunken Russian cosmonauts, and free-floating turds.
The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To
D. C. Pierson’s adolescent heroes hope for a future in which “‘existence engineer’ and ‘clone wrangler’ will be viable career paths.”
Star-Smoked Skies
Kuipers is a “traditional poet” with respect to her unwavering focus on craft; the engine powering her verse is tight word choice that simultaneously conjures up tangible, living objects and…
The Kingdom Within
In a new collection, Anthony Doerr lovingly explores the topography of the natural world and the shifting interior landscapes of memory.
The Shaking Woman
Siri Hustvedt’s memoir is a sprawling exploration of memory and the ways trauma manifests in physical illness—less Mary Karr, more Oliver Sacks.
Better She Had Slapped Me
Tongue contains none of the typical tricks, irony, or obsessive self-absorption of many recent books. Each poem is self-contained, yet are all of a piece.
Moving Pictures
A husband-and-wife team of graphic novelists move from superhero tales to a stark, quiet story about art and the Holocaust.
Brace Yourself
Jennifer Richter’s poems invite us to understand that each of us is a threshold—something pain passes through.
Imperial Bedrooms
I felt like the book pulsed in my bag, a bright-covered blip that kept demanding I come back and progress a few pages.