Tag Archives: fall 2010

TRICKSTER: Native American Tales

A Graphic Collection edited by Matt Dembicki Fulcrum Books ($22.95) by Britt Aamodt Storytelling is as old as humanity. We tell stories to share a laugh, to communicate knowledge and experience, to persuade and to entertain. And though professional storytelling has become relegated, for the most part, to elementary schools and children's events at the […]

THE ODDLY COMPELLING ART OF DENIS KITCHEN

introduction by Neil Gaiman essay by Charles Brownstein design by John Lind Dark Horse Books ($34.99) by Seth D. Lowry Although at first this book seems oddly titled, in the end one can rightly conclude that Denis Kitchen’s art is indeed “oddly compelling.” Perhaps that’s because Kitchen is better known as the publisher of the […]

FLARE

Cole Swensen Illustrations by Thomas Nozkowski Yale University Press ($25) by Kristen Evans From the moment the reader takes flare off the shelf, she is asked to think about space and form—two elements Cole Swensen's poetry and Thomas Nozkowski's paintings challenge on both visual and linguistic registers. Published on textured, heavy stock, flare is an oversized book […]

LOOK BACK, LOOK AHEAD: The Selected Poems of Srečko Kosovel

Srečko Kosovel translated by Ana Jelnikar and Barbara Siegel Carlson Ugly Duckling Presse ($17) by Amy Groshek Teens, critics, and undergraduate professors seem preternaturally drawn to the work of those who die young. But brilliance is not the de facto inheritance of the unlucky and the self-destructive. One need not consult a psychologist to conjecture […]

THE APPLE TREES AT OLEMA: New And Selected Poems

Robert Hass Ecco ($34.99) by James Naiden Born in San Francisco in 1941, Robert Hass has written some of the most memorable poetry by an American in the last half century. Through his prose about poetry, his translations (which he has done from Polish, German, Japanese, and Korean), and his stewardship as United States Poet […]

MEAN FREE PATH

Ben Lerner Copper Canyon Press ($16) by Kristen Evans Ben Lerner’s newest book isn’t really interested in giving straight answers—or for that matter, asking straight questions. Thoughts and conversations are disrupted, ideas and syntax scrambled. Meaning struggles to the surface through the disappearing memory of a dream. Formally, Mean Free Path is shaped by the speaker’s hesitation […]

SQUEEZED LIGHT: Collected Poems 1994 – 2005

Lissa Wolsak Station Hill Press ($21.95) by Hank Lazer In Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, Emmanuel Levinas writes that “the birthplace of ontology is in the said,” and he prods us to think about what might lie before “language contracts into thought.” In Lissa Wolsak’s poetry, we live and breathe and achieve awareness in that […]

THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS: On Method

Giorgio Agamben translated by Luca di Santo and Kevin Atell Zone Books ($24.95) by Adrian Doerr Since the publication of the English translation of The Coming Community in 1993, Giorgio Agamben’s philosophical work has held a prominent place in Anglo-American academic thought. Characterized by his immense subject range—spanning a field that moves from the political to the […]

ABOUT A MOUNTAIN

John D’Agata W. W. Norton & Co. ($23.95) by Cindra Halm For readers who know the genre-bending lyric essays that John D’Agata writes about in and selects (as an editor) for Seneca Review, and for those who have read his own high-concept, high-construct poetic essays in Halls of Fame (Graywolf Press, 2001), About a Mountain may be a surprise. Reading […]

A NOVEL MARKETPLACE: Mass Culture, the Book Trade, and Postwar American Fiction

Evan Brier University of Pennsylvania Press ($49.95) by Matthew Thrasher The intellectual anxiety of our age is that no one reads anymore. Television and the Internet have murdered the book, skinned it, and now wear its mask throughout outer and cyber space—sleeping in its bed, living its life, and laying claim to its nexus of […]