Tag Archives: FALL 2015

Mr. West

Sarah Blake Wesleyan ($24.95) by Will Randick It’s hard to get away from Kanye West—he finds a way to put his hand in so many different forms of art. Kanye has a large influence on today’s music and fashion, but what about poetry? In Sarah Blake’s Mr. West, the subject is viewed from an angle […]

Leaving Leaving Behind Behind

Inger Wold Lund Ugly Duckling Presse ($9) by Tova Gannana “What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, hear more, to feel more.” —Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation Inger Wold Lund, a Norwegian living in Berlin, wrote Leaving Leaving Behind Behind in English. A book of poems in the […]

Mot, A Memoir

Sarah Einstein University of Georgia Press ($24.95) by Renée E. D’Aoust Chosen by John Phillip Santos as the winner of this year’s AWP Award in Creative Nonfiction, Sarah Einstein’s Mot, A Memoir is a breathtakingly beautiful read. In this unique story of friendship, Einstein drives from her home in West Virginia to Texas to spend […]

Confluence

Sandra Marchetti Sundress Publications ($14) by Heidi Czerwiec The “confluence” of this debut collection of poems may refer to several things: how these poems blend the style of Elizabeth Bishop’s piercing observations to the dense dexterity of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ musical language; the ecstatic merging of words with ineffable experience; and the passionate union of […]

The Kitchen-Dweller’s Testimony

Ladan Osman University of Nebraska Press ($15.95) by Wesley Rothman Paradise is to ask whatever you like. A tea with God. I have filled a book with questions I can’t remember. —“Following the Horn’s Call” In his “Preface” to Ladan Osman’s chapbook Ordinary Heaven (part of the Seven New Generation African Poets series, published by […]

The Late Poems of Wang An-Shih

Wang An-Shih Translated by David Hinton New Directions ($16.95) by John Bradley “Part peasant and part Prime Minister” is how translator David Hinton describes Wang An-Shih (1021-1086), as he has been known primarily for his Sung Dynasty populist political reforms. Now, thanks to Hinton’s new translations, “poet” can be added to Wang’s descriptors. At the […]

The Discreet Hero

Mario Vargas Llosa Translated by Edith Grossman Farrar, Straus & Giroux ($26) by Ed Taylor Novelists Ford Madox Ford and Joseph Conrad, beginning in 1898, began one of the more interesting collaborative projects in modern literature, writing three novels together. The books themselves are not great, but the collaboration sparked the pair to codify theories […]

Your Face in Mine

Jess Row Riverhead Books ($27.95) by Douglas Messerli Jess Row’s fiction Your Face in Mine is a work about many things—perhaps far too many things! On one hand, it is the story of growing up and moving away from childhood connections, while still being pulled back into those adolescent roots. It’s the tale of a […]

Please Talk to Me

Liliana Heker Translated by Alberto Manguel and Miranda France Yale University Press ($16) by Jackie Trytten In a moment, a casual comment spoken or action taken can change a life irrevocably. Liliana Heker, an award-winning writer from Argentina, writes of these moments in this translated version of her short story collection, Please Talk to Me. […]

Fall 2015

INTERVIEWS The Hole of Hypocrisy: A Conversation with Kent Johnson on the U.S. “Avant-Garde” and Other Fictions Gadfly Johnson sheds light on the hypocrisies of American life, but his new book is an lyrical memoir about his meetings with poets over the course of his life. Interviewed By Michael Boughn American Death Poems: An Interview […]