Commentary |
on Killing Spree, poems by Jorie Graham
“Graham writes from within a world where catastrophe no longer announces itself as event and instead settles … into the very medium through which perception itself must now pass.”
Commentary |
on After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order by Rana Dasgupta
“The book couldn’t be timelier: the wars in the Middle East signal the folly of American Empire, seeking to entrap other countries, an historical inflection point — an ‘unraveling of political cultures built up over many decades.'”
Commentary |
on Abundant Life: new & selected poems by Hank Lazer
“Lazer’s poetry attests to the ambiguity attending to questions of spirit; that it is unsettled, in process – a doubt, a question, a restless questing negativity, eating away at its own boundaries.”
Commentary |
on As When Waking, poems by Daniel Schonning
“As When Waking is rare among debuts in that it does not primarily announce a personality. It announces a system … These poems are not confessions; they are structures of listening.”
Commentary |
Book Notes — on The Reservation, a novel by Rebecca Kauffman, True Mistakes, poems by Lena Moses-Schmitt, Talking Classics by Mary Beard & Every Time We Say Goodbye, a novel by Ivana Sajko
“The work in True Mistakes often reflects on getting things wrong while imagining what getting things right might look or sound like. This amounts both to an attitude and a technique.”
Commentary |
on Everything Is Photograph: A Life of André Kertész by Patricia Albers
“Kertész was wincingly aware in his lifetime of what he saw as his artistic misfortune and neglect, but by posthumously landing Albers as his biographer, he’s gotten lucky.”
Commentary |
on Down Time, a novel by Andrew Martin
“Martin has written a cruel and thrilling book, one whose satire reflects with terrible clarity the ways we want to hurt each other.”
Commentary |
on Translation Multiples: From Global Culture to Postcommunist Democracy by Kasia Szymanska
“… how poet-translators used translation to present the ambiguity of language, the complexity of creative expression, and their subjectivity as values of democratic pluralism.”
Commentary |
on No Way Home, a novel by T. C. Boyle
“… psychological realism isn’t Boyle’s goal so much as a vivid portrait of decline. Entropy and ferality is Boyle’s business as a novelist; his grand theme is that we fail.”
Commentary |
on After the Flood: Inside Bob Dylan’s Memory Palace by Robert Polito
“Perhaps the ‘secret’ of Dylan’s late stage creativity resides in his ability to store and process an enormous database of information about himself and the history of American folk music.”
Commentary |
on Tarantula, an autofiction by Eduardo Halfon
“He’s perpetually questioning — or being questioned about — his recollection of events, and so he seeks out the recollections of others to help him interpret what he believes he experienced. But the accuracy of these details is rarely as important as the way that Halfon the character has processed what he or his loved ones have endured.”
Commentary |
on City Like Water, a novel by Dorothy Tse, translated from the Chinese by Natascha Bruce
“Tse’s dream-like approach to the extreme political tensions between Hong Kong and China engages the European tradition of city writing while playing to her own strengths as a surrealist writer.”
Commentary |
on If You Would Let Me, poems by Maggie Dietz
“At the heart, the collection is about what the bonds between parent and child are made of, offering a story not just about separation but violent renting and grief.”
Commentary |
on The Invisible Years, a novel by Rodrigo Hasbún, translated from the Spanish by Lily Meyer
“The narrator recounts this disquieting story not because he can sum it up neatly but because, in putting it down on paper, he’s creating a version he can live with.”
Commentary |
on The Near and Distant World, poems by Bianca Stone
“… circuitous narratives brimming with associative leaps, which showcase her command of vernacular speech, and carry one with a sturdy dream logic.”