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on Anybody, poems by Ari Banias
Poetry is sparking with the urgency to expose the ways in which historical, cultural, physiological, and personal meanings impinge on our use of language. For some poets, a reluctance to engage primarily with -- and present the mediated “I” within the context of -- these given connections is tantamount to approving stereotypes and ignoring the…
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on Good Vibrations by Mike Love and I Am Brian Wilson by Brian Wilson
There are at least two audiences for the new autobiographies by Brian Wilson and Mike Love. The first comprises Boomers who still buy tickets to hear the aged Beach Boys sing “California Girls” and want to linger over their idols. The second group ruminates over the Beach Boys’ significance and puzzling discography. Love’s Good Vibrations:…
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on The Opposite of Light, poems by Kimberly Grey
We are archaic -- in our sources, impulses, outreaches and aloneness. They say dogs have stereo olfaction -- they can smell two things at once through independent nostrils. Some poets have dual sensors, too – one for the triggering situation, one for the archaic presence within it. By necessity, the initial brief notices of Kimberly…
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on Mutants, selected essays by Toby Litt
“Literary Fiction is Pin the Tail on the Donkey,” writes Toby Litt, “without being spun round and round, and without the blindfold.” And that’s just for starters. In Litt’s world, you either advocate for the disruptive power of literature or are its misguided adversary. He adds, “Literature makes you realize that you are not an…
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on Writers and the Writing Life, Book Burning, and the Fate of Ideas
Because You Asked: A Book of Answers on the Art & Craft of the Writing Life, edited by Katrina Roberts On the Burning of Books by Kenneth Baker The Fate of Ideas, essays by Robert Boyers * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * As Whitman College’s…
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on This Number Does Not Exist, poems by Mangalesh Dabral
In October 2015, Hindi poet Mangalesh Dabral was awarded the Sahitya Akademi prize by India’s National Academy of Letters. He turned down the award and its cash prize in protest over the death of the scholar M.M. Kalburgi, a progressive voice among a caste group called the Lingayat. Dabral was objecting to a wave of…
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on Angel of Oblivion, an autofiction by Maja Haderlap, translated by Tess Lewis
Born in 1961 in Eisenkappel, Austria, Maja Haderlap worked for twenty years as a dramaturg, university lecturer, and cultural critic. In the 1980’s, her three books of poems drew attention for their unique lyricism and perspective on the experiences of Slovenian Austrians. But it was the stunning artistry of her unexpected novel, Angel of Oblivion…
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on How To Set a Fire and Why, a novel by Jesse Ball
Jesse Ball’s novels clarify their unconventional premises and intentions according to their own natures. As a genre-shuffler, Ball draws you in through mastery of voice and context – strangely valid accounts of strangely familiar worlds. His processes demand as much recognition as his plots; his characters collude in gratifying the demand. Just as Samedi the…
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on Invisible Man: Ralph Ellison and Gordon Parks in Harlem, edited by Michal Raz-Russo
In 1947, Ralph Ellison had been working on his novel Invisible Man for two years when he was approached by an editor at The Magazine of the Year to write a feature on the new Lafargue Psychiatric Clinic in Harlem. Lafargue offered psychiatric services to blacks and whites, the only institution in New York to…
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on Conversations in Jazz and Music in the Air: Selected Writings of Ralph J. Gleason, ed. by Toby Gleason
John Coltrane told Ralph Gleason that at live gigs his quartet always played “My Favorite Things” for 14 minutes and his solo repeated a general pattern. “This is something I didn’t want it to do,” said Coltrane, “but it does it … I don’t want it to be that way … But it usually goes…
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on The Young Bride, a novel by Alessandro Baricco, translated by Ann Goldstein
Alessandro Baricco’s thirteenth novel, The Young Bride, is spoken by the title character, now 53 and experiencing a “sudden disintegration” and “an uncontrolled collapse of my personal life.” But this is no illness narrative. Baricco (b. 1958 in Turin) is a psyche-comedic writer, inventive in his methods, sly in his intentions, and attuned to the…
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on New Non-Fiction: Russia’s Criminalization, Female Delinquents at Samarkand Manor & a Diary of the Nazi Occupation of France
The Less You Know, The Better You Sleep: Russia’s Road to Terror and Dictatorship Under Yeltsin and Putin by David Satter (Yale) Bad Girls at Samarcand: Sexuality and Sterilization in a Southern Juvenile Reformatory by Karin L. Zipf (Louisiana State University Press) Season of Infamy: A Diary of War and Occupation 1939-1945 by Charles Rist,…
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on Something Will Happen, You’ll See, stories by Christos Ikonomou, tr. by Karen Emmerich
In March 2015, the editors of Der Spiegel met with a group of six influential Greeks for a roundtable discussion on relations between Germany and Greece. The six included a state minister, the mayor of Athens, a pop star, an entrepreneur, a journalist, and Christos Ikonomou whose second story collection, Something Will Happen, You’ll See,…
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on New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America, by Wendy Warren (Liveright/W.W. Norton)
A probate record filed in Suffolk County, Massachusetts in 1661 lists “An Inventory of all such Goods Mr John Stoughton died possest of.” His estate included the following: 1 Stone horse, 1 Gelding Lame & Sickly one man Negro named John & one Negro boy named Peter One beam Scales & 882 of Leaden waights…