Ish KleinCanarium Books ($17) by Robert Fernandez “The world is full of miracles; toys / are our blueprints for better living,” writes Ish Klein in her latest book, The New Sun Time, a riveting account of how life expresses itself in the world. Here, we see the world from the perspective of life and […]
Mike IngramAwst Press ($14) by Guillermo Rebollo Gil The driver, about to turn thirty-eight, is driving his friend’s Subaru from Philadelphia to LA. It’s not like he drives for a living—he mostly reads and writes. He has a girlfriend but is unsure if they have a future together. He has a teaching job in a […]
Julie DoucetDrawn & Quarterly ($29.95) by Steve Matuszak “I had vowed never to draw myself again,” Julie Doucet tells readers at the beginning of Time Zone J, her first graphic novel since her comics diary 365 Days was published in 2006. Time Zone J seems to be an emphatic repudiation of that vow, since Doucet’s […]
by Mike Dillon Modern readers do not need to be told to admire John Keats: whether they know it or not, he has already entered their dreams, he is a portion of their hopes, he lives in their desires. —Stanley Kunitz, “The Modernity of Keats” Orphaned at fourteen and dead of consumption in 1821 at […]
Iliana RochaTupelo Press ($18.95) by George Longenecker In this startling collection, Iliana Rocha writes about the unsolved homicide of her grandfather in Detroit in 1971; each of the twenty-six poems that have the same name as the book’s title offers a different interpretation of Inocencio Rodriguez’s death, based on the memories of family members in […]
Christian HawkeyAction Books ($18) by Michael Overstreet Midway through translator-poet Christian Hawkey’s intimate literary rapprochement with Georg Trakl’s life and poems, Ventrakl (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010), he asks the late Austrian writer the question, “What do you mean by ‘read’?” Trakl answers him, “I mean widen your nostrils when approaching any text.” Understanding the act […]
Be Who You Are Kodo NishimuraWatkins Publishing ($21.95) by Aditi Yadav How does one process one’s life and identity? In pursuit of the answer to this question, humans have taken refuge in religion, philosophy, science, and art. As individuals, we desire to live a fulfilling life, and self-acceptance is the first, yet often toughest, step […]
In conversation with Kate DiCamillo and Louise Erdrich Wednesday, December 7, 5:30 pm CentralFree Virtual Event: Register Here Join us for a bound-to-be-legendary conversation between three prose masters! To celebrate her new book A Left-Handed Woman (FSG), Rain Taxi welcomes Judith Thurman, a prolific staff writer at The New Yorker and a winner of the National Book Award in Biography. At […]
Reimagining Discarded America Michelle Wilde AndersonAvid Reader Press ($30) by Jonathan Shipley Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The care of human life and happiness . . . is the first and only object of good government.” His contemporary, Thomas Paine, wrote, “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an […]
Jessy ReineNew Urge Editions ($12.95) by Havilah Barnett Jessy Reine’s novella The Secret of Geraniums reconsiders the confines of acceptable boundaries within romantic relationships, pushing past traditional stories of perverse encounters with dominant men and offering instead a feminine account of love. The story follows thirty-three-year-old Rebecca, who has a ten-year-old son, Sam, from a […]