Online Edition: Spring 2008
This is the COMPLETE Spring 2008 online edition of Rain Taxi.
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Interviews
Posted in our Second installment
Chip Kidd
Form and Content
interviewed by Eric Lorberer
Reviews
POETRY
Posted in our First Installment
The Republic of Poetry
Martín Espada
Espada’s latest is a moving collection that cries with outrage at social injustice and with tribute for poets whose lives have been marked by courage and humanism. —reviewed by Cindy Williams Gutiérrez
Duende
Tracy K. Smith
Something haunts Tracy K. Smith’s second book of poems—perhaps the invisible yet palpable veil between life and death. —reviewed by Cindra Halm
Dear Body:
Dan Machlin
Machlin’s poetry gives real pleasure—and a challenge in ascertaining whether we are more than the sum of the parts we can easily name and tabulate. —reviewed by Nate Pritts
Poetry Round-up
Mine by Tung-Hui Hu
I Don't Believe In Ghosts by Moikom Zeqo
Velocity by Nancy Krygowski
Three new poetry collections explore the slippery, ghostlier demarcations of contemporary life. —reviewed by Lizzie Hutton
Posted in our Second installment
In the Pines
Alice Notley
Notley challenges preconceived notions about poetry in this stunning new volume, taking on such subjects as the fragility of mental stability and the differences between men and women. —reviewed by Christopher Luna
Another Kind of Nation
An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Poetry
edited by Zhang Er and Chen Dongdong
If poetry is, as Ezra Pound put it, “news that stays news,” then poetry in translation is news from abroad—but the news isn't always easy to digest. —reviewed by Lucas Klein
Complications by Garrett Caples
and
No Real Light by Joe Wenderoth
Two new books of poetry by eclectic voices tackle the polymorphic anxieties of the 21st century. —reviewed by Kevin Carollo
FICTION
Posted in our First Installment
The Apocalypse Reader
edited by Justin Taylor
As the title suggests, this collection of short stories explores catastrophic scenarios for our shuddering pleasure. —reviewed by Spencer Dew
Remainder
Tom McCarthy
A man suffers a traumatic injury and adopts an unusual method of recovery: a quest for authenticity. —reviewed by Ken Chen
How Best To Avoid Dying
Owen Egerton
The world is a deceptively menacing place, as any reader of these surprising and original stories will gather. —reviewed by Stephen Clair
Posted in our Second installment
The City in Crimson Cloak by Asli Erdogan
and
I Have the Right to Destroy Myself by Young-Ha Kim
Two novels recently published in America—though originally published in Turkey in 1998 and South Korea in 1996, respectively—cast twin lights onto unsettling storytelling obsessions. —reviewed by Alan DeNiro
The Quiet Girl
Peter Høeg
Høeg’s purported “fast-paced philosophical thriller” proves to be a rant on the spiritual trends of the day. —reviewed by Poul Houe
Paradise Road
Kirk Nesset
2007 winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, Nesset displays his mastery of the short story form in twelve richly lyrical stories about ordinary people. —reviewed by Karen Walcott
NONFICTION
Posted in our First Installment
The Changing Face of Evil in Film and Television
edited by Martin F. Norden
The face of evil fascinates us, yet these essays caution that this oscillation between desire and disgust is always coded in political and psychological terms, even as it dons a moral garb. —reviewed by Brian Bergen-Aurand
Scientists and Scoundrels
Robert Silverberg
Originally published in 1965, Scientists and Scoundrels is a compendium of tales about scientific frauds from the early 18th to mid 20th-centuries. —reviewed by Kristin Livdahl
Hugo Gernsback and the Century of Science Fiction
Gary Westfahl
Westfahl’s essays and articles honor the work of Hugo Gernsback, the writer who set into motion the modern science fiction phenomenon. —reviewed by Ryder W. Miller
2012 Round-up
Serpent of Light by Drunvalo Melchizedek
Beyond 2012 by James Endredy
2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck
Are you ready for change? Three books on the Mayan end-of-world prophecy. —reviewed by Kelly Everding
Posted in our Second installment
Javatrekker
Dispatches from the World of Fair Trade Coffee
Dean Cycon
Cycon’s chronicles traverse ten countries in nine chapters, tracking the consequences of conventional coffee trade from well-organized cartels in the Kenyan Highlands to disjointed family plots in Papua New Guinea. —reviewed by Dakota Ryan
Choice
True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility, Adoption, Single Parenthood, & Abortion
edited by Karen E. Bender and Nina de Gramont
This volume of personal essays ambitiously tackles the subjects of pregnancy, abortion, childbirth, and motherhood from a variety of perspectives, exploring as many different life choices and their consequences as there are voices in the collection. —reviewed by Jessica Bennett
Sensational Modernism
Experimental Fiction and Photography in Thirties America
Joseph B. Entin
Entin explores the artistic means of Depression-era fiction and photography by which artists distanced themselves from the poverty-stricken people of the time. —reviewed by W. C. Bamberger
Sleeping with Bad Boys
Alice Denham
Denham’s memoir is a genuinely subversive book that questions how we make flawed celebrities into authorities that determine literary standards. —reviewed by Sharon Olinka
ART & PHOTOGRAPHY
Posted in our First Installment
Two books on relatively unknown 20th-century Canadian artists bring their important contributions to light. —reviewed by Alice Dodge
Posted in our Second installment
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Berlin Alexanderplatz
edited by Klaus Biesenbach
This photographic exploration of Fassbinder's 16 hour and 15 minute epic drama about a paroled murderer encapsulates Fassbinder’s work, telling the story of Germany between the wars as a country closing in on itself, serenading itself in the delusion of its own grandeur.
—reviewed by Brian Bergen-Aurand
GRAPHIC NOVELS
Posted in our First Installment
Macedonia
Harvey Pekar and Heather Roberson
The legendary Pekar helps tell the story of Roberson’s visit to the Balkan nation, a research trip for her peace studies thesis in which she build the case that war is not inevitable. —reviewed by David Kennedy-Logan
Posted in our Second installment
Blue Pills
A Positive Love Story
Frederik Peeters
Peeters's autobiographical graphic novel is a starkly honest diary of self-revelation that transcends clichés and cultures. —reviewed by Donald Lemke
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Rain Taxi Online Edition, Summer 2008 | © Rain Taxi, Inc. 2008