Summer 2019

INTERVIEWS

Lost Children Archive: An Interview with Valeria Luiselli
Interviewed by Allan Vorda
The acclaimed Mexican novelist and essayist discusses her influences, including the effects her itinerant childhood had on her identity, her writing life, and her latest novel, which explores issues of immigration.

From Nature: An Interview with Alan Bernheimer
Interviewed by Caleb Beckwith
A mainstay of the Bay Area Language Poets, poet and translator Alan Bernheimer embraces electronic and traditional expressions of verse and prose; here he discusses his work and influences, including The Byrds, Philip Soupault, and his New York beginnings.

Bearing Witness: An Interview with Bram Presser
Interviewed by David Wilk
Australian writer Bram Presser discusses his novel, The Book of Dirt, a compelling story that explores the real-life events of Presser’s Czechoslovakian grandfather, Jakub Rand, from the 1920s through the Holocaust and into his post-War life in Australia.

FEATURES

Siblings: Four Recent Poetry Titles from Singapore’s Math Paper Press
The Woman Who Turned Into A Vending Machine by Natali Wang
Afterimage by Werner Kho
footnotes on falling by Joshua Ip
In These Curved Spaces by Andrea Yew

As a micro-collection of the Math Paper Press canon, these books are spotlights as well as vast tunnel systems pointing toward illumination, echo, and the attempt to meet truth through individuality. Reviewed by Greg Bem

NONFICTION REVIEWS

Between Two MillstonesBook 1: Sketches of Exile, 1974-1978
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Newly translated into English, Solzhenitsyn’s memoir covers his life in Switzerland and his search for a new place to live so he can write in peace. Reviewed by Jeff Bursey

The Faun's Bookshelf: C.S. Lewis on Why Myth Matters
Charlie W. Starr
A C. S. Lewis expert turns to the imaginary texts of Tumnus the faun to explore Lewis’s theory of myth. Reviewed by Ryder W. Miller

Stonewall at 50
The Stonewall Reader
Edited by The New York Public Library
Love and Resistance: Out of the Closet into the Stonewall Era
Edited by Jason Baumann
The summer of 2019 marks the 50th year since the events of LGBTQ history known as the Stonewall Riots, and in addition to Jason Baumann’s work on a New York Public Library exhibit marking the occasion, he has edited two books drawing on the resources of the NYPL’s archives and collections. Reviewed by Greg Baldino

This Atom Bomb in Me
Lindsey A. Freeman
Freeman describes coming of age in and around the Oak Ridge, TN laboratories that provided research and fissile material used in the atom bombs, and how she carries her “atomic childhood” within herself. Reviewed by Will Wlizlo

The Art of Voice: Poetic Principles and Practice
Tony Hoagland with Kay Cosgrove
The Art of Voice demonstrates that this poet’s friendly provocateur brio didn’t quit with his poems. Reviewed by Mike Schneider

POETRY REVIEWS

Friedrich Hölderlin: Selected Poems and Letters
Friedrich Hölderlin
This new posthumous collection gathers all of translator Christopher Middleton’s endeavors regarding Hölderlin into one volume, making it ideal company for both the acquainted and unacquainted reader alike. Reviewed by Patrick James Dunagan

Sleep in a Strange House
Jessica Purdy
For the reader, Purdy’s poetry is like traveling through her dreams or watching a surrealist movie, the meaning of which lies just out of reach. Reviewed by Douglas Cole

Oculus
Sally Wen Mao
Sally Wen Mao’s Oculus sets out to examine the connections between the gaze and how technology has blurred the definition of sight, making it possible to see without truly seeing. Reviewed by Margaryta Golovchenko

Dolefully, a Rampart Stands
Paige Ackerson-Kiely
Ackerson-Kiely’s third collection of poems is strewn through with mystery and the uncanny, with lines that reshape, amplify, and at times destabilize all that has preceded them. Reviewed by Thomas Moody

Autobiography of Death
Kim Hyesoon
With disturbing imagery and fever-pitch emotion, Kim Hyesoon’s cycle of forty-nine poems explores realms of death with imagination, originality, and courage. Reviewed by John Bradley

The Book
Stéphane Mallarmé
The ambiguous, unachievably ambitious project that Mallarmé called The Book was the primary, hermetic vehicle for the atheist mysticism that became his life’s project. Reviewed by Olchar E. Lindsann

After Effects
Judith Janoo
The effects of war on a soldier and his family run through these poems, with language that speaks to personal loss. Reviewed by George Longenecker

Windy Day at Kabekona: New & Selected Prose Poems
Thomas R. Smith
A rich collection of Smith’s work reveals his deep connection with the natural world and the heritage of his midwestern world. Reviewed by Allan Cooper

FICTION REVIEWS

The Beginning of His Excellent and Eventful Career
Cameron MacKenzie
MacKenzie’s debut novel revels in poetic language as it follows the transformation of Francisco “Poncho” Villa from illiterate child to feared revolutionary. Reviewed by John Wall Barger

The City in the Middle of the Night
Charlie Jane Anders
In this splendidly imagined novel, Earth’s inhabitants flee to January, a new world of terror and beauty, out of apocalyptic necessity. Reviewed by Chris Barsanti

Sly Bang
Larissa Shmailo
Sly Bang is written with tremendous energy and moves at an exhilarating pace, yet it dwells on depraved characters and actions. Reviewed by Jefferson Hansen

Talk Across Water: Stories Selected and New
Merrill Gilfillan
Gilfillan’s new story collection takes its own measure of the northern Plains—its sense of collective distance and memory, how language and narrative test the human limits here. Reviewed by Garin Cycholl

A Fortunate Man
Henrik Pontoppidan
This new English translation of a 750-page long Danish novel written more than a century ago is a heavyweight both literally and figuratively, with TV and movie adaptations to come. Reviewed by Poul Houe

Another Kind of Madness
Ed Pavlić
As they try to cope with a world they feel they cannot properly perceive and trust, the characters’ responses in Ed Pavlic’s new novel powerfully drive the narrative. Reviewed by Julian Anderson

Ghost Wall
Sarah Moss
Set in the north of England in the 1990s, Ghost Wall centers on seventeen-year-old Silvie and her parents, who have teamed up with an archaeology professor and his students to fulfill her father’s fantasy of re-enacting life in the Iron Age. Reviewed by Greg Chase

Rain Taxi Online Edition Summer 2019 | © Rain Taxi, Inc. 2019