My Nebraska is Only One Nebraska: Erica Trabold’s Five Plots
Five Plots wades into the enigmatic relationships between family and memory, where truth is seemingly as placid as the Platte River but re-examination causes a re-route.
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Hard-Earned, Essential Grace: Anaphora by Kevin Goodan
No elegy is an island and this elegy is no exception.
This Peculiar Burden: Wesley Yang’s The Souls of Yellow Folk
Yang boasts an admirable track record in publishing on a variety of subjects, but a highlight reel does not a cohesive collection make.
Obsession and Impulse: Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights
The words act as a push, like a wind at your back.
Terrible Beauty: Diane Seuss’s Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl
...in every piece in the collection, Seuss reminds us that so much depends upon noticing.
A Weeping Tree of His Own: Yasunari Kawabata’s Dandelions
Blindness as a concept is central to Kawabata’s novel, where every character is blind to something.
Form as Container: Samantha Zighelboim’s The Fat Sonnets
Zighelboim almost has to break the form into pieces in order to speak; a fourteen-word poem is really only the echo of a sonnet.
Hard to Swallow: Allie Rowbottom’s Jell-O Girls
Jell-O, that seemingly innocuous, gem-colored dessert, has a darker history than one might expect.
Three Strong Women: Lisa Rosenberg, Maw Shein Win, and Libby Burton
Welcome all three of these books with enthusiasm for what they do, and with shared possibilities for the ”craved world.”
Dream Big: Hillary, Made Up by Marianne Kunkel
Hillary, Made Up is a complex feminist undertaking that undermines traditional notions of interpretation.
Beyond Beowulf: Maria Dahvana Headley’s The Mere Wife
In this novel, the women control everything.
