Of Language and Lineage: Carlina Duan’s Alien Miss
All the while, the sound of the poetry behind the telling is sharp, rhythmic, and controlled.
...more
Posts Tagged: book review
The Art of Bearing Witness: Sanctuary by Emily Rapp Black
As the title suggests, Sanctuary creates a safe space for grief in all its forms.
...more
A Multi-Modal Study of Exquisite Blackness: Krista Franklin’s Too Much Midnight
In Franklin’s telling, we are not just born, but fervent in our existence.
...more
A Universe of Enterprising Divas: Raphael Cormack‘s Midnight in Cairo
In Midnight in Cairo, the lives of the enterprising divas are interlinked.
...more
Like Clockwork, Like Memory: There Is Still Singing in the Afterlife by JinJin Xu
How to live with a love so intense, a pressure so ripe?
...more
Sketch Book Reviews: American Monuments by David Benjamin Sherry
An illustrated review of David Benjamin Sherry’s new book, AMERICAN MONUMENTS!
...more
Lightning Rods and Line Breaks: The Malevolent Volume by Justin Phillip Reed
Frighteningly detailed, this poet knows horror well.
...more
The Fractures of Motherhood: Julia Fine’s The Upstairs House
Like Fine’s uniquely constructed book, being a mom is to be permanently fractured.
...more
There Are No Cheap Seats in Lauren Shapiro’s Arena
Resonance is a given. You can’t help but hear. In Lauren Shapiro’s Arena, every seat is the best seat in the house.
...more
Acts of Love: Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
Zauner’s memoir is not a performance, but an act of love, including all the dirty little bits that come with it.
...more
Both Microscope and Telescope: The Absurd Man by Major Jackson
The Absurd Man is confident and daring with a muscular specificity of language that is both deeply resonant for a wide audience and also singular to the poet.
...more
The More Painful Absence: Keema Waterfield’s Inside Passage
In this lush and raw account, musicians play, voices harmonize and then separate again, town after Alaska town rolls by… and Waterfield searches for home.
...more
Inner Conversations Projected on a Surface: Bruno K. Öijer’s The Trilogy
A family’s grief traps generations in a search for insight.
...more
The Isolation of Millennial Life: Ancco’s Nineteen
Nineteen is a book that’s by turns smart, sad, and scathing.
...more
The Revolutions of a Sonnet: frank: sonnets by Diane Seuss
The richly historied form of the sonnet is a powerhouse for holding the past.
...more
How We Create Ourselves: Second Place by Rachel Cusk
The voice reaches and reaches at answers to broad questions. Sometimes it pulls back pieces of insight and beauty.
...more
Sketch Book Reviews: Seek You by Kristen Radtke
An illustrated review of Kristen Radtke’s new book, SEEK YOU!
...more
Scrutinizing the Ties That Bind: Melissa Febos’s Girlhood
By the end of the collection, Febos has managed to rewrite or erase entirely many parts of the patriarchal script that held her bound.
...more
Child as Mother to the Woman: Catherine Gammon’s China Blue
In this book we are taken by all three: language, plot, character.
...more
The Past Is All We Have: André Aciman’s Homo Irrealis
Is it not in the warm chambers of the past, after all, that we are immortal, invincible, and alive?
...more
Sketch Book Reviews: Quotients by Tracy O’Neill
An illustrated review of Tracy O’Neill’s debut novel, QUOTIENTS!
...more
Panic Mode: The Influencing Machine by Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld
Cyclical patterns of journalism notwithstanding, Gladstone sees this moment as uniquely concerning.
...more
Pockets of Belonging: Wandeka Gayle’s Motherland: And Other Stories
The characters of Motherland might be displaced, but they are never alone.
...more
Other Stories, Other Lives: Life among the Terranauts by Caitlin Horrocks
By the time the television cameras arrive, the rest of the world may be surprised, but we’re not.
...more
To Set Asunder: The Separation and Synthesis of Tiana Nobile’s Cleave
A word becomes a reckoning, a reconciling of contradiction.
...more
The Reconstruction of Derrida: Peter Salmon’s An Event, Perhaps
The key insight is that names, and indeed all boundaries, involve a hierarchy.
...more
Unsettled Memories: First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami
Author and narrator, fiction and memory, never settle comfortably into their proper places.
...more
Electric Synthesis: Drakkar Noir by Michael Chang
Chang’s style imitates internet culture and the patterns of an anxious mind. But there’s also glamour.
...more
Both of These Things Are True: Negative Space by Lilly Dancyger
The frame expands. The structure collapses. The pieces are still speaking.
...more
Sketch Book Reviews: White Magic by Elissa Washuta
An illustrated review of Elissa Washuta’s new essay collection, WHITE MAGIC!
...more