David Jauss Press 53 ($19.95) by Benjamin Woodard The greatest hits album is an interesting beast, for while an artist’s most popular work is compiled into one tidy parcel, allowing easy access for the casual fan unconcerned with deep cuts, the effort often feels Frankenstein-ish in construction. By removing songs from their original presentation, themes […]
Demetria Martínez University of Oklahoma Press ($14.95) by Jenn Mar In her highly anticipated The Block Captain’s Daughter, Demetria Martínez lays the groundwork for a new understanding of Chicano and Mexican-immigrant identity in a novella that follows six activists and immigrants as they experience the vicissitudes of recognition and daily life. Months after crossing the Mexican […]
Anthony Varallo Triquarterly Books/Northwestern University Press ($17.95) by James Naiden Anthony Varallo’s third collection of stories brings together disparate elements of his characters’ lives, the uneven hinges that make up the human condition. Think of Me and I’ll Know often displays superior writing even if the page-by-page execution of the story itself is not always consistent; to […]
Eric Lundgren Overlook Duckworth ($25.95) by Daniel Green Although nothing definitive can be said about prevailing assumptions in American writing by considering any particular first novel, Eric Lundgren’s The Facades seems to reflect an understanding of what makes a work of fiction “unconventional.” Whether such an understanding arises from influences absorbed in a creative writing program, through […]
Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics Edited by TC Tolbert and Tim Trace Peterson Nightboat Books ($27.95) by Matthew Cheney Lori Selke’s biographical note at the end of Troubling the Line gives some sense of what is both at stake and at play in this extraordinary anthology: “Lori can’t decide on a gender or a pronoun: she, […]
Volume Four: North African Literature Edited by Pierre Joris and Habib Tengour multiple translators University of California Press ($39.95) by Brooke Horvath The first two volumes of Poems for the Millenniumanthologized experimental poetries from the fin de siècle to the end of the twentieth century; the third gathered those Romantic and Post-Romantic poets out of whose […]
Jim Cohn Musex Records ($25) by Kirpal Gordon Although Venerable Madtown Hall is postbeat poet/scholar/musician Jim Cohn’s eighth CD of spoken word and music, it’s his first to come with a DVD, and he couldn’t have chosen a better date. Filmed in black and white by Katrina Miller and William Garrison, The Making of Venerable Madtown Hall is an ars […]
Malachi Black Argos Books ($10) by Tikva Jacob The best way to read Malachi Black’s Quarantine may be to start at the end. Or in the middle. Of course, there’s always the option of starting at the beginning—if you can find it. As a collection of crown sonnets, this chapbook is extremely cyclical. Black trudges from desperate […]
Jen Hofer Little Red Leaves ($12) by Marthe Reed Jen Hofer’s new chapbook Front Page News, a series of newspaper cut-ups clipped from the front page of the Los Angeles Times, leads its readers through a recitation of the matter-of-fact violence that characterizes the pages of newspapers everywhere. Part of a longer manuscript which Hofer composed each […]
Alfred Corn Press 53 ($14.95) by James Naiden Alfred Corn has published nine volumes of poetry since 1976. He has also published a novel and a book of essays as well as a book-long study of prosody. So he knows, presumably, how to construct a readable poem. Unfortunately, in his new book Tables, he stuffs many […]