book review
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Documenting Existence: Deed by Justin Wymer
Wymer is grappling with survival, with the cost of the duplicity of identity.
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Still Wouldst Thou Sing: Nightingale by Paisley Rekdal
Figures from antiquity—those masks of learned, privileged poets—are rendered utterly contemporary, down to earth.
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Identity Politics and the English Language: Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times
Who “owns” the English language?
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Justice by Seeing: Of Color by Jaswinder Bolina
But perhaps it is our want for firm ground that Bolina is challenging.
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What We Need: Juan Felipe Herrera, Maw Shein Win, and John Freeman
Barbara Berman reviews Every Day We Get More Illegal, Storage Unit for the Spirit House, and The Park.
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Learning to Be Haunted: Dennis James Sweeney’s Ghost/Home
We make a home, in other words, by letting in our ghosts.
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Any Moment Is a Door: Nadia Colburn’s The High Shelf
Again, the red door stands open, allowing the world to enter.
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Brief Moments Upon the Blank Page: Moyra Davey’s Index Cards
The collection enacts—even performs—its own coming into being.
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Beloved Names and Incantatory Powers: heidi andrea restrepo rhodes’s The Inheritance of Haunting
And so it is an exorcism, yes, but also a song.
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The Cost of Liberation: Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn
Patsy’s imagined freedom in America, she discovers almost immediately, was an illusion.
