Warren Ellis and John Cassaday Wildstorm/DC Comics ($14.99) by Woody Evans A story of great complexity and grace, Planetary is about a group of extraordinary people with peculiar skills whose job it is to uncover and tidy up the sometimes ugly secrets of the last century. Elijah Snow, Jakita Wagner, and The Drummer—the three “mystery archeologists” of […]
David Michalski Bootstrap Press ($15) by David Madgalene What happened to the Word Trade Center on September 11, 2001 changed the world and much has been written and discussed about these events. However, to find out what the World Trade Center truly had been, in its totality, not just word of its demise, is the […]
Stefanie Marlis Apogee Press ($12.95) by Eric Elshtain Few poets today twist with language like Stefanie Marlis; almost to a one, each poem in her latest book cloudlife adds yeast to the thinking mind with syntactic, semantic, or semiotic puzzles. “[T]hat ghost has climbed into my bed again / with its seely smile,” Marlis says in the […]
David Breskin Soft Skull Press ($13.95) by Ross O'Hara The “Prelude” to David Breskin’s Escape Velocity includes a sprawling sestina that envelopes the page with music, art, politics, and sex, setting the tone for a compelling collection. The repetition of end words reminds us that no matter how we rearrange this world, we are left with echoes […]
Adrian Castro Coffee House Press ($14) by Shannon Gibney In order to tell a story, you must have a language in which to tell it. But what if the very subject you are writing about is the multiplicity of language—the fact that, in our postcolonial, postmodern moment, the poet, the shaper of language, the meaning-maker […]
Colette Inez Melville House Publishing ($12.95) by Daniela Gioseffi Colette Inez has been an independent voice on the New York City poetry scene for many years; this latest and very fine collection, her ninth, displays Inez at the top of her craft. Offering the wit and wisdom of a broadly cultured and highly intelligent woman, […]
Anne Carson Alfred A. Knopf ($24.95) by Courtney Queeney Anne Carson’s genius and weakness reside in her work’s incredible range of form and conception. Decreation contains (among others) lyrics, essays, a screenplay, and an opera. The proliferation of forms is central to the project, and the risks she takes make her poems startle and delight. Even the […]
The First Crusade: A New History, The Roots of Conflict Between Christianity and Islam Thomas Asbridge Oxford University Press ($35) The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople Jonathan Phillips Viking Press ($25.95) by Summer Block By any standard, the First Crusade was an almost miraculous military success. Hounded by disease and starvation, debilitated by […]
Alexandra Bruce The Disinformation Company ($9.95) by Jaye Beldo Packaging quantum physics for the masses inevitably draws forth many a paradox. In the independent film What the Bleep Do We Know these paradoxes become difficult to dismiss and beg scrutiny by anyone who wants to gain a deeper, unbiased understanding of the science it attempts to explain. […]
Michelle Herman University of Nebraska Press ($25) by Clifford Garstang Mistakes were made: that’s the gist of The Middle of Everything, Michelle Herman’s “memoirs of motherhood.” Herman, a novelist and writing teacher, has come late to marriage and parenting but is so love-struck upon the arrival of her daughter, Grace, that she bursts with child-raising confidence. […]