By Emily May Anderson
The poems in Soul in Space, Noelle Kocot’s sixth collection, spark across its pages like synapses firing in the brain.
Review: Soul in Space by Noelle Kocot
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Review: The Mongolian Conspiracy by Rafael Bernal
By Ho Lin
The word “fuck” is deployed fast and furious by Filiberto García in Rafael Bernal’s The Mongolian Conspiracy — easily hundreds of times — and given that Filiberto is a public dick whose Christian name also means “dick,” this all might seem excessive to certain discerning readers.
Review: Nothing by Anne Marie Wirth Cauchon
Review by Heather Mackey
Sometimes it’s hard to call a book “promising,” with all that the word connotes of amiability. Anne Marie Wirth Cauchon’s debut novel Nothing is as promising as a rattlesnake.
Review: Stand Our Ground: Poems for Trayvon Martin & Marissa Alexander
By Daniel Shank Cruz
As its subtitle indicates, Ewuare X. Osayande’s anthology Stand Our Ground: Poems for Trayvon Martin & Marissa Alexander attempts to make space for poetry within the fractious public discourse surrounding two recent examples of race-related legal injustice.
Review: Notes on the Mosquito by Xi Chuan
By Karen An-hwei Lee
If I could sing well enough — or play acoustic guitar, for that matter — I would sing Xi Chuan’s early lyric poems in a quiet studio with a swept parquet floor.
Review: Somewhere Near Defiance by Jeff Gundy
By Daniel Shank CruzIn Somewhere Near Defiance, his sixth full-length collection of poems, Jeff Gundy is at the top of his game. The book revisits Gundy’s usual catalog of subjects — small-town life in the Midwest, nature, Mennonites, being on the road, and so on —...
Review: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
By Diego BáezDonna Tartt has turned out a single novel every decade, starting with her bestselling debut, The Secret History (1992), a semi-autobiographical “murder mystery in reverse” about students at a small private school in Vermont. The Little Friend (2002)...
Review: It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris by Patricia Engel
Review by Caitlin Callaghan
“He just wanted to live his dream of dying in Paris.” So says one of the new housemates of Leticia “Lita” del Cielo on her first morning as a new tenant in the House of Stars, a run-down mansion on the Left Bank in which well-moneyed—or “green-blooded”—young women board year by year.
Review: The Poetry of Jack Spicer By Daniel Katz
By Patrick James Dunagan
I first encountered poems by Jack Spicer in Don Allen’s anthology New American Poetry, however, his work didn’t immediately strike my fancy at the time.
Review: This Is Between Us by Kevin Sampsell
By Nancy Smith
Only a few paragraphs into This Is Between Us, it becomes clear that this is an intimate portrait of a relationship. A narrator speaks, perhaps confesses, directly to his lover of five years, and we get to peek inside the everyday details of this romance.
Review: Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford
By Caitlin Callaghan
Early on in Jamie Ford’s new novel, Songs of Willow Frost, William Eng, the twelve year-old protagonist, is about to run away from Seattle’s Sacred Heart Orphanage with his best friend, Charlotte.
Review: Russell Atkins: On the Life & Work of an American Master
By Patrick James Dunagan Both prolific and diverse, Russell Atkins’ literary output crosses over traditional divisions of genre, style, and form. He has drafted musical scores for many of his literary works and theorized his original theory of practice in his essay "A...
Review: Lillie was a goddess, Lillie was a whore
By Daniel Shank Cruz Penelope Scambly Schott’s sixth full-length poetry collection, Lillie was a goddess, Lillie was a whore, examines prostitution throughout history. The title character appears in different manifestations throughout the book and is named after the...
Review: Singing in Magnetic Hoofbeat: Essays, Prose Texts, Interviews and a Lecture 1991-2007
By Patrick James Dunagan
Will Alexander astounds. Prolific beyond any easily understandable degree, poems, plays, novels, philosophical tracts, and artwork endlessly pour forth from him—I even recently witnessed him play piano in a San Francisco performance with the Cloud Shepherd ensemble accompanied by jazz violinist India Cooke.