by Michael Newirth Is adolescence a greater torment for the artist? If everybody in those years must face struggles about bodies, gender, identity, and sex, creative people may in particular wince when recalling the awkward growing pains of high school romance. For Cris Mazza, PEN/Algren award-winning author of eighteen books and the subject of […]
New York 2140 Kim Stanley Robinson Orbit Books ($28) This Census Taker China Miéville Del Rey ($16) by Paul Buhle As icebergs break off into the ocean and threats of mass extinctions gather, it’s normal (if “normal” is the word) for Science Fiction to re-emerge as a form of social exploration and social criticism. Happily, […]
Interviewed by Jorge Armenteros The repercussion of the work of Rosa Montero in the world of International Hispanism is enormous. Ten books, thirty doctoral theses, and more than 120 academic papers have analyzed her work. In 1978 she won the World Interview Prize, in 1980 the National Journalism Prize, and in 2005 the Madrid Press […]
Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen To Be Famous Strangers Alana Massey Grand Central Publishing ($26) by Lizzie Klaesges At first glance, Alana Massey’s debut collection All the Lives I Want might appear to contain wistful affections for the many famous women included in her work. However, the book actually offers something much more […]
Trump: The Complete Collection Harvey Kurtzman, et. al. Dark Horse Books ($29.99) The Realist Cartoons Edited by Paul Krassner and Ethan Persoff Fantagraphics Books ($44.99) by Steve Matuszak It’s either fitting or ironic that, when America was on the verge of swearing in a president who throughout his campaign had waged a scorched-earth war on […]
Rochelle Hurt Barrow Street Press ($16.95) by Rachel Slotnick As Rochelle Hurt read in a small off-site café during February’s AWP conference, she seemed haloed in an angelic yellow light as the snow spiraled blue behind her through the window. It seemed fitting that she was awash in such memorable lighting, as her poetry is […]
Anna Leahy Shearsman Books ($17) by Eileen Murphy Mrs. Tinman of Oz observes of her son: “He was always the sort of child who played / in the rain.” In Aperture, Anna Leahy’s new collection, the poet takes us into the minds of fascinating but overlooked women, real and imaginary. The book becomes a chorus […]
Bruce Holsapple University of New Mexico Press ($59.95) by Michael Boughn William Carlos Williams was arguably the most important poet of his generation, especially for those of us who came of poetic age in the 1960s. Taking his lead from H.D.’s radical rethinking of the line, Williams ran with it, opening the field with Spring […]
Paul Auster Henry Holt ($32) by Steven Felicelli A book about a book, a book that one could read and also write in. A book that one could enter as if it were a three dimensional space. . . . —Paul Auster, 4 3 2 1 To an untrained ear, Paul Auster is the Aerosmith […]
Thi Bui Harry N. Abrams ($24.95) by Jeff Alford The best memoirists reveal familiarity in the foreign. Challenged with the task of presenting their lives as something another person would read, they must find a way to break apart the uniqueness of their history into something more broadly connective, pushing readers towards an abstract sort […]