Carley Moore Tinderbox Editions ($16) by Celia Bland Buyer beware! Carley Moore warns her readers that “I plan to wallow and wander, to get stuck and linger over painful moments and difficult texts. I am trying to figure something out here and to name it for myself and for you my dear friend.” These essays […]
Fayeza Hasanat illustrations by Chitra Ganesh Jaded Ibis Press ($17.99) by Laura Nicoara Once upon a time there lived a bird catcher. He captured a beautiful bird and adorned her with precious jewels to coax her to sing, but she would only sing if she were free—so he ripped her to shreds with great violence. […]
Lena Zumas Back Bay Books ($16.99) by Julia Stein Lena Zumas’s Red Clocks brilliantly combines the forms of speculative fiction and thriller to tell the intertwined stories of four women in an Oregon fishing town. Two years previously the United States Congress had banned abortion with the Personhood Amendment, and a second law, Every Child […]
Karl Ove Knausgård translated by Don Bartlett and Martin Aitken Archipelago Books ($33) by Chris Via “So much in life is unspoken.” The full impact of this assertion hits the reader with the force of 3,600 pages, this book being the capstone of Karl Ove Knausgård’s six-volume cycle of autobiographical novels. Apprehending and articulating the […]
Claudia Keelan Barrow Street Press ($24.95) by Brian Evenson One of the strengths of Claudia Keelan as a poet—and a strength that is wonderfully showcased in her new and selected poems, We Step into the Sea—is that she remains restless and never predictable. Evincing a great curiosity, she engages in formal variation not to show […]
Edited by Rita Banerjee and Diana Norma Szokolyai C & R Press ($20) by Greg Bem The relationship between the writer and their practice is ongoing, and this collection feels like a generous gift to those who already write, those who may be dabbling, and those who may be completely stuck in either newness or […]
Hamid Sulaiman Translated by Francesca Barrie Interlink Books ($20) by Jeff Alford In the comics medium, the border between well-wrought artistry and political authenticity can be an uncomfortable one, as form and content tend to jockey for position. Because journalism requires an immediacy that comics cannot easily support given its visual gestation period, many questions […]
Philip Lamantia Edited by Garrett Caples Wave Books ($25) by Patrick James Dunagan “Not to have this fact seem too important, in relation to my poetry, I state nevertheless that I am fifteen years old.” So begins Preserving Fire: Selected Prose by poet Philip Lamantia (1927-2005). With entries dated from 1943 to 2001—the span of […]
Jindrich Štyrský translated Jed Slast Twisted Spoon Press ($28.50) by Paul McRandle “Where should I flee? . . . My childhood is my country. My dreams are my country.” So wrote Jindrich Štyrský following the invasion and destruction of his native Czechoslovakia by the Nazis. In encapsulating his situation, he also encapsulated his art. Dreamverse […]
Interviewed by Scott F. Parker John T. Lysaker is a professor of philosophy at Emory University and the author of several books, including the recently published Philosophy, Writing, and the Character of Thought (University of Chicago Press, $35) and Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports (Oxford University Press, $14.95). I met John when I […]