Muharem Bazdulj translated by Nataša Milas Dalkey Archive Press ($15) by Seth Rogoff In Transit Comet Eclipse, we are asked to consider the movement of celestial bodies—Venus as it transits the sun, the dance between sun and moon as they block and shadow each other’s light, the flare of a comet. These astronomical wonders are […]
Adam Tavel University of Evansville Press ($15) by Dana Wilde I doubt if the judges who awarded the 2017 Richard Wilbur Book Award to Adam Tavel’s Catafalque were thinking about Edgar Allan Poe at the time, but they might have been. For a couple of reasons. One is the subject matter: Tavel’s poems cover a […]
by bart plantenga While much poetry is soft drink, and some of it wine, very little of it qualifies as cognac. Karen Garthe’s poetry is that ruminating bouquet, a cognitive dissonance of richness in the realm of austerity. Neither minimal nor concrete begin to describe it. Beguiling and with ligaments concealed, the words provoke: The […]
POET Clark Coolidge Pressed Wafer ($15) THE CIRCUS Clark Coolidge Flow Press ($15) by Patrick James Dunagan Clark Coolidge is a powerhouse among poets; over the years his sheer output has been nothing less than monumental, and at seventy-nine years of age shows no signs of stopping. The latest little brick-of-a-book added to the Coolidge […]
Bin Ramke Omnidawn ($17.95) by Cindra Halm Bin Ramke’s poem “The World Vibrates Variously” offers a microcosmic philosophy in both its sonorous syllables and essayistic unspooling of idea. Here are the closing gestures, having first touched on matter and energy, birdsong and traffic, art and personal perspective: The story cannot be told in profane language […]
Rachel Heng Henry Holt and Co. ($35) by Rachel Hill U.S.-based Singaporean writer Rachel Heng’s debut novel Suicide Club depicts a near-future dystopia in which optimized healthcare for the privileged few creates a society where the inevitability of death is replaced by the inevitability of living. In this governmentally mandated healthcare paradigm, suicide, as a […]
Zachary Mason Farrar, Straus and Giroux ($26) by Chris Via Zachary Mason began his publishing career with a revitalization of Homer’s Odyssey, reserving his proclivities as a computer scientist for his second novel, Void Star, a work of science fiction with nods to William Gibson. Now he returns to revamping classics, this time following the […]
Interviewed by Gavin Pate Over the past decade Robert Kloss has steadily produced a haunting body of work. From his early chapbook How the Days of Love and Diphtheria, through his novels like The Alligators of Abraham and The Women Who Lived Amongst The Cannibals, Kloss has explored the dark corners of American history and […]
Donald Quist Awst Press ($17.50) by Nick Hilbourn Donald Quist’s For Other Ghosts follows a path traced by his award-winning nonfiction collection Harbors: narrative as a map and its trajectory as a layered rather than a linear move. Present are the disciplined narrative control, the intelligent caprice that holds onto the handlebars by its fingertips […]
Jennifer O’Grady MadHat Press ($19.95) by Eileen Murphy Does your life feel safe? Perhaps it shouldn’t. “Our lives are not conceived with warrantees,” warns the speaker in Jennifer O’Grady’s tell-it-like-it-is second poetry collection Exclusions & Limitations. Suitably, this advice is found in a poem about the speaker’s own wedding ceremony, “where vows are made, [and] […]