Reviews
2651 posts
When Background Becomes Foreground: Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown
Chinatown comes to vivid life in Yu’s hands.
Make the Words an Elsewhere: Magdalena Zurawski’s The Tiniest Muzzle Sings Songs of Freedom
[Zurawski] is the advocate for the open exterior of poetry.
Constant Motion: Children of the Land by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
More than a longing for an origin story, Hernandez Castillo’s memoir is an attempt to bring the invisible to light.
Paranoid Reality: Monica Sok’s A Nail the Evening Hangs On
A loss is a loss. Neither the circle nor the form can be completed.
Tech Is Boring: Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener
Luckily, Wiener offers us more than eloquent masochism.
The Poem Must Forgive: E. J. Koh’s The Magical Language of Others
Empathy and forgiveness must begin with understanding.
How to Write about Nothing: Kate Zambreno’s Drifts
But the evasion is purposeful, and the purpose is to marvelous effect.
A Tightrope Act: Frozen Charlotte by Susan de Sola
It’s de Sola’s genuineness in portraying this tightrope act that is Frozen Charlotte’s chief virtue.
Frenetic, Excitable, and Direct: Sylvie Baumgartel’s Song of Songs
This poem lets her—the speaker and Baumgartel—be too much.
Everything Is Alive: Dunce by Mary Ruefle
Ruefle’s memories are as alive as the bodies holding them.
On Loss of Land and Loss of Girlhood: Taneum Bambrick’s Vantage
Girlhood remains, like the land, a constant site of male fascination, desire, and violence.