16 Graphic Biographies Edited by Monte Beauchamp Simon & Schuster ($24.99) by Paul Buhle The idea that comic artists have worthwhile biographies has become an object of the upscale sector of the book trade, with gorgeous volumes reminding collectors of the greatness of creative giants along with healthy selections of their work. Masterful Marks, in […]
William GiraldiLiveright Publishing ($24.95) by John Pistelli To date, the novelist William Giraldi is less renowned for his fiction than for his criticism. With his notorious 2012 review of Alix Ohlin’s work in The New York Times, Giraldi entered the literary scene as a fiery, uncompromising defender of canonical standards on the model of one of […]
Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese Translated and introduced by Sam Hamill Tiger Bark Press ($24.95) by John Bradley “Every translation is a provisional conclusion,” Sam Hamill tells us in his informative introduction to this collection of Chinese poetry, which includes poems from 330 BCE to the 16th century. Later, he states again that a […]
The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse Translated by Red Pine Copper Canyon Press ($17) Yellow River Odyssey Bill Porter Chin Music Press ($17.50) by Justin Wadland The translator known as Red Pine thinks of translating in terms of dancing. “I see the poet dancing, but dancing to music I can’t hear. Still, I’m sufficiently enthralled by […]
Berlin! Berlin! Dispatches from the Weimar Republic Kurt Tucholsky translated by Cindy Opitz foreword by Anne Nelson introduction by Ian King Berlinica ($14.95) Rheinsberg: A Storybook for Lovers Kurt Tucholsky translated by Cindy Opitz Berlinica ($14.95) by M. Kasper In his 1931 essay “Left-Wing Melancholy,” Walter Benjamin criticized three Berlin journalists and cabaret writers by […]
Christine Wertheim Counterpath ($30) by Maria Damon There is a way that language shudders into the very flesh, not because our flesh is made sense of through language, but because language emerges from and returns to the body. —Jefferson Hansen (thealteredscale.blogspot.com, September 21, 2104) What could be more fun than a tract of feminist psychoanalytic […]
Wang Ping Wings Press ($16) by Andreas Weiland Wang Ping’s new collection Ten Thousand Waves looks at a wide swathe of Chinese history and literature, and examines various issues stemming from immigration to America. Possessing a unique gift for telling small stories with powerful emotional effects, she conveys the voices of farmers and factory laborers, […]
rob mclennan Chaudiere Books ($15) by Brian Mihok Sometimes it's painful to a writer to label his work, as if putting a name to it reduces its parameters. In saying what it is, you are also saying what it is not, and in doing so you might deny the ultimate strength of literature—to be layered […]
Amy Catanzano Noemi Press ($15) by Cindra Halm Let’s take a journey involving both quantum and cosmic universes, a point of view from “fourth person narration,” characters named for Greek concepts, and metafictional investigations of the human capacity to express in words. And, of course, a time machine. Amy Catanzano’s Starlight in Two Million: A […]
Arthur Sze Copper Canyon Press ($16) by Ted Mathys In Arthur Sze’s stunning tenth collection, he departs from previous books by adopting new formal techniques to illuminate one of his enduring themes: how to account for the simultaneity of lived events in a poetic language that is damned to unfold over time. The book opens […]