Commentary |
on What Is Otherwise Infinite, poems by Bianca Stone
“… evocative imagery, wild leaps, risible asides, winsome sprezzatura, cerebral surprises, and deep foraging into an array of such timeless and timely subjects …”
Commentary |
on The World That the Shooter Left Us, poems by Cyrus Cassells
“These are poems that rage against injustice with both sustained fury and consummate craft. An agile imagination and sharpness of diction are propelled by a deft control of sound.”
Commentary |
Book Notes: Music at Terezín, Seasons of Purgatory by Shahriar Mandanipour, and Lydia Pyne’s Postcards
“The psyche in Mandanipour’s stories gnaws at an actual world and eludes purgatory for the moment by giving that world an obsessively resonant sound …”
Commentary |
on Pee Poems by Lao Yang, translated by Joshua Edwards and Lynn Xu
“Urine in poetry annoys all the right people in contemporary China. The state, hyperfixated on productivity, political cleanliness and national power, can’t burn it, sell it or shoot it from a gun.”
Commentary |
on High-Risk Homosexual, a memoir by Edgar Gomez
“Gomez sheds light on the obstacles working-class Latinx queers continue to face, at home and in social settings. Information, education, financial support, social services — resources that become lifelines at the most critical junctures — can be elusive.”
Commentary |
on I Will Die in a Foreign Land, a novel by Kalani Pickhart
“The wave of protests during the 2013 Euromaidan uprising in Kyiv simmers in the background and flares in the foreground … the novel portrays a citizenry refusing to submit to a Russian takeover.”
Commentary |
on O, and Green: New and Selected Poems by Paul Hoover
“O, and Green illuminates with sustained brilliance the murky circumstances we’re living in — and persuades me that he is among our most virtuosic poets.”
Commentary |
on Groundskeeping, a novel by Lee Cole
“While replete with big ideas and a well-developed conception, the novel offers little to challenge, enthrall, or excite at the base unit of fiction.”
Commentary |
on Architects of an American Landscape, nonfiction by Hugh Howard
“The Olmsted-Richardson relationship sparked questions that persist. What should a building that integrates with the environment look like? What makes buildings sustainable? What democratizing powers does architecture truly possess?”
Commentary |
on By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 1500-1800, edited by Eve Straussman-Pflanzer and Oliver Tostmann
“As feminist art historian Mary Garrard has written, ‘History is created by repetition and magnification — something men have been quite good at — and if a woman artist or writer is not augmented through these tools, her ars will not be longa.'”
Commentary |
on None But The Righteous, a novel by Chantal James
“This is a novel about who we are and what we are like, all of us. At its heart, the narrative pulses with heedful care and curiosity about freedom versus control, contentment versus adversity …”
Commentary |
on City of Incurable Women, a novel by Maud Casey
“The trauma her characters experience never becomes a pat explanation for personal difficulties or failures. Instead, these ‘incurable women’ create complex selves always in motion.”
Commentary |
on The Family Chao, a novel by Lan Samantha Chang
“Chang focuses on complicated family relationships … converting Dostoevsky’s siblings into first-generation American children of Chinese parents raised in a small midwestern town.”
Commentary |
on A Time Outside This Time, a novel by Amitava Kumar
“One underlying question unites the many fragments of this novel. It’s the narrator’sown: ‘Who among your neighbors will look the other way when a figure of authority comes to your door and puts a boot in your face?'”
Commentary |
on Slash / Slash by Amorak Huey and W. Todd Kaneko & Between Us, Not Half a Saint by Rushi Vyas and Rajiv Mohabir
“Both collections masterfully depict how a hungry audience can be entranced and manipulated — and how manipulators learn to wield this power.”