Commentary |
on The New Dark Ages: The Death of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society by James Marriott
“He views literacy as the foundation of liberal democracy; if the foundation crumbles, the edifice collapses. The shift away from print has stoked a broader crisis.”
Commentary |
on Cargo, photographs by Richard Misrach, with an introduction by Rebecca Solnit
“Solnit sees the photos as a sly commentary on human capacity to memory-hole humanity’s destruction of the environment. The Bay, she writes, is ‘the region’s half-forgotten heart'”
Commentary |
on The Blue Eye of Earth, poems by Beckian Fritz Goldberg
“Goldberg does not exactly make desperation look like fun, but she confronts that condition with swagger and elan, with the confidence of a consummate technician, and above all … tenacity”
Commentary |
on The Complete Stories by Ingeborg Bachmann, translated by Philip Boehm & Tess Lewis
“Bachmann’s search for the language of genuine human connection, her radical vulnerability, and her passionate stance against fascism come across as more vital than ever.”
Commentary |
Book Notes, Poetry — on Safe Rooms by Rae Armantrout, Diary of Small Discontents by John Yau & Surety by Anna Zumbahlen
“I think of Armantrout’s work as a multi-decade enchantment with the process of cognition as she encounters our culture and tangles with popular notions.”
Commentary |
on The Shadow of the Object, a novel by Chloe Aridjis
“In 2021, near the conclusion of a two-year residency at the Swedenborg Society in London, Chloe Aridjis was asked to tell a series of stories, not using words, as she was accustomed to doing, but images projected by a magic lantern.”
Commentary |
on Sidetracked: Exile in Hollywood, a novella in verse by Alexander Voloshin, translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk
“Dralyuk deserves praise for his archival work of recovery and representation of an essential American story … and for slipping seamlessly into a voice that produces parody, self-deprecation, and honest humility.”
Commentary |
on The Going Is Forever, poems by Elizabeth Metzger & To See Yourself as You Vanish, poems by Andrea Werblin Reid
“There’s an Escher-like destabilization that moves through Metzger’s poems, a constant shifting of perspectives and emotional tenors that can lead to a moment of freedom.”
Commentary |
on Said the Dead, nonfiction by Doireann Ní Ghriofa
“Channeling the voices of dozens of real former mental patients, the book’s pages witness no small complement of suffering and strife, but with a certain equanimity.”
Commentary |
on The Unraveling, poetry by Wyn Cooper
“Misreading is in the atmosphere, even as the sentence that holds that atmosphere remains lucid, intact, answerable to itself.”
Commentary |
Book Notes — on they and Hafni Says, novels by Helle Helle, Carousel by Sarah Minor & Blood Money, a novel by Anna Seghers
“The macro-view may be an illusion. And that is the preoccupation of Carousel, a series of striking moments of speculation, anecdotes, and history that pass by, or that the reader passes as if on a text-carousel.”
Commentary |
on Ampersand Organ, poetry by heidi andrea restrepo rhodes
“The indissoluble weight of the poet’s intersecting identities informs how they feel about poetry as a whole and, therefore, how they choose to wield it.”
Commentary |
on Astronaut!, a novel by Oana Aristide
“Aristide taps into the frustrations, precocity, and innocence of childhood to lead readers into the dread experienced by Romanians during Ceaușescu’s regime.”
Commentary |
on Freedom’s Gate: Maya Angelou, Lorraine Hansberry, Abbey Lincoln, Miriam Makeba & Nina Simone Live at the New York Nightclub That Shaped the Civil Rights Movement by Soya Diggs Colbert
“As Diggs Colbert writes, ‘The women depended on one another more than they even knew. As they went from being ingenues to career starts, they collected and created shared practices for survival.'”
Commentary |
on Rich Wife, poems by Emily Bludworth de Barrios
“She registers the private joys and domestic pathos of entrapped lives — reminding us that all women, privileged or not, face continuing obstacles.”