by John Toren Philosophy has long been held as the sovereign intellectual discipline for a simple reason: it can tell us what science (for example) is, while science can't tell us what philosophy is. Yet philosophy's commanding point of view and long history of asking elemental questions have never produced much widespread relevance to daily […]
Adrian Matejka Penguin Books ($20) by Tryn Brown The title of Adrian Matejka’s latest collection of poetry, Somebody Else Sold the World, echoes David Bowie’s smash single “The Man Who Sold the World”; amazingly, the 1970 chart-topper was based, in part, on a scarcely known poem called “Antigonish” that was written for a play in […]
Want Lynn Steger Strong Picador ($17) The Life of the Mind Christine Smallwood Hogarth ($27) by Julia Stein Lynn Steger Strong’s Want and Christine Smallwood’s The Life of the Mind are two new novels about working as an adjunct professor in what many call adjunct hell. Despite no security and low wages, by 2013 over […]
Ulises Carrión with essays by Felipe Becerra, Mónica de la Torre, Verónica Gerber Bicecci, Annette Gilbert, India Johnson, Michalis Pichler, Heriberto Yépez with translations by Christina MacSweeney aand Shane Anderson Ugly Duckling Presse ($20) by Michael Workman Widely recognized as a source of what is now discussed loosely as the “artist book” movement, the Mexico-born, […]
Julia von Lucadou Translated by Sharmila Cohen World Editions ($16.99) by Joseph Houlihan The High-Rise Diver by Julia von Lucadou describes the world of today from an inevitable future, evoking a city deeply entrenched in surveillance, social media, and influencer culture. In this future, children are selected through trials to participate in different career and […]
Katie Kitamura Riverhead Books ($26) by Mike Alberti Early on in Katie Kitamura’s new novel Intimacies, the narrator encounters three municipal workers walking down a pedestrian street, directing a machine with a long, hose-like protuberance. They look as though they are “leading an elephant by the trunk,” and it takes her a moment to discern […]
Friederike Mayröcker Translated by Donna Stonecipher Seagull Books ($24.50) by Walter Holland On June 4, 2021, the Austrian poet Friederike Mayröcker died in Vienna. Born in 1924, Mayröcker wrote a multitude of literary works, including prose poems, audio plays, memoirs, novels, children’s books, dramas, and a libretto, many of which garnered major Austrian and German […]
Brecht Evens Drawn & Quarterly ($29.95) by Jeff Alford Like a metropolis of vampires, this city comes alive at night, and we join Brecht Evens’s cast of miscreant wanderers in its bars and streets as they stagger towards oblivion, clarity, or a blur between the two. An intoxicating, meticulously painted graphic novel, The City of […]
Danielle Evans Riverhead Books ($27) by Serenity Schoonover Danielle Evans’s The Office of Historical Corrections is an unflinching perspective on the most polarizing issues facing the U.S. today. Through six short stories and a novella, Evans’s protagonists—savvy, hell-bent, unapologetic women survivors—wrestle with the disparaging realities of socioeconomics, race, and gender. The stand-out story is “Alcatraz,” […]
Judy Halebsky University of Arkansas Press ($17.95) by Lee Rossi Poet Judy Halebsky spent five years in Japan studying the theatrical and dance forms Noh and Butoh, an experience that informs her third book, Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged). Charming, self-effacing, and deeply reverent of Tang and Heian poetry, she offers a contemporary take […]