Alison Bechdel Houghton Mifflin ($19.95) by Stephen Burt Don’t expect Yet More Dykes to Watch Out For from this smart, moving, attractively drawn, and decidedly serious memoir in comics form. Alison Bechdel's long-running Dykes strip is witty enough for anyone—the lesbian Doonesbury, if you like—but this first full-length work from the award-winning cartoonist does, and reveals, more than any […]
Can’t Get No (Vertigo/DC Comics, $19.99) Crypto-Zoo (King Hell Press, $17.95) The Maximortal (King Hell Press, $17.95) by Eric Lorberer As the medium of comics earns a greater place in the American reading imagination, it’s worth recognizing the plethora of remarkable creators who have shaped its contemporary contours. Superstar writers like Neil Gaiman, Harvey Pekar, […]
edited by Peter Conners Starcherone Books ($20) by Nava Renek In our age of test marketing and referential storylines, it’s sometimes hard to remember that writing is a creative act that can produce material as original and multifaceted as any other art form. PP/FF, an anthology edited by Peter Conners, serves up an exciting collection of […]
Jim Goar Effing Press ($6) by Scott Glassman Jim Goar’s Whole Milk proves that Grade A, vitamin-rich poetry doesn’t need to come in a fancy package to be enjoyable—and honestly, who doesn’t prefer the simplicity of a half-pint carton over those plastic, color-splashed, non-biodegradable Chug bottles? This plainspoken surrealist fairy tale could be a lesson in matter-of-fact […]
Gabriel Pomerand translated by Michael Kasper and Bhamati Viswanathan Ugly Duckling Presse ($14) by Geoffrey Cruickshank-Hagenbuckle I’d like to be able to reflect on each and every word. I’d like not only to give each one a subterranean meaning, but also to break its jaw and thus transform the face it intends to possess forever. […]
Sawako Nakayasu Quale Press ($12) by Dennis Barone Sawako Nakayasu’s highly structured yet exploratory volume intrigues its reader from title to final page. Consider the title: how does fiction move through webs of truth and artificiality? We often call our narratives “true stories” and yet that expression rarely seems oxymoronic. How does a person, more […]
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge University of California Press ($19.95) by Ben Lerner If one outlines the shape of an apple with a continuous line one makes an object of the shape, whereas the contour is rather the ideal limit toward which the sides of the apple recede in depth. Not to indicate any shape would be to […]
Nathaniel Mackey New Directions (15.95) by Grant Jenkins In Nathaniel Mackey’s latest book of poems, Splay Anthem, we see a poet at the height of his powers. Gathering work published over the past decade in journals as various as Calalloo and Conjunctions, Splay Anthem is Mackey’s first book of poems since 1998’s Whatsaid Serif and consists exclusively of poems from two continuing […]
Mark Steenerson Steidl ($65) by Glenn Gordon “Life’s a bitch, and then you die.” So says the bumper sticker, and there are days in Minneapolis in February that bear it out, the streets in rags of dirty snow, the sun seeming to have lost all interest in ever shining on the Earth again. Spirits cast […]
edited by Francis Meynell Duckworth/Overlook ($23.50) by Amanda Nadelberg There is something both comforting and strange about old things coming back into fashion—comforting because it’s usually nice to see it again, strange because Someone Has Decided It Should Be So. And it happens with everything: fashion and appliances, and it’s always happening with books—and thank […]