IN A SPRAY OF SPARKS:
Emotion, Sincerity, and the “Skittery Poem of Our Moment”
by J.G. McClure
Pick up any fashionable poetry journal and you’re likely to see an example of what Tony Hoagland has called the “Skittery Poem of Our Moment.” Such a poem does not simply lack coherence; it actively resists it....
The characteristics are familiar: leaping from thought to thought, sharply-written-but-largely-nonsensical phrases, quirky humor, an assertive-yet-evasive voice, and so on. We move from talk to skin to cities to tubas to friends, never afforded the chance to stop and consider any one element. The mode is so widespread as to be instantly recognizable: it is what many readers likely think of immediately upon hearing the phrase contemporary poetry....
SAY IT AGAIN, BUT BETTER:
Resistance and Revision
by Devi S. Laskar
Writers get writers’ block. Happens to everyone at one point or another. It happens to some writers every solstice, every month, every fortnight. I struggle every day.
Thanks to a recommendation from an old friend, I’ve been reading Steven Pressfield’s really great book, The War of Art, which talks about resistance and how we as writers get sucked in to the war of Doing Anything But the Writing That is Most Important to Us.
Resistance, as Pressfield calls it, comes in many forms, including but not limited to: fear, self-doubt, self-dramatization, victimhood, isolation and general unhappiness.
BRIEF EULOGIES AT ROADSIDE SHRINES
by Mark Lyons
Wild River Books, 216 pages
reviewed by Jon Busch
“...they just stick him in the ground with no stone, no nothin’. That ain’t right I say to myself.”
This short passage from “He Sure Do Want to Fly”, one of the many superb pieces in Mark Lyons’ most recent short story collection, Brief Eulogies at Roadside Shrines, summarizes the intent of the work precisely. With the assurance and ease of a well-worn traveler, Mr. Lyons escorts the reader on a voyage through the lonely corners of North America, erecting descanos—roadside memorials—along the way. Each story, in its own manner, is an offering to the Gods of forgotten souls, or as the eponymous hero of the story, “Arnold’s Roadside Café” eloquently states, “The Great God of Roadkill.”
The collection pulses with a tragic calmness akin to the writings of Carver or Cheever. Beneath every scene and absurd occurrence lurks a temperate sadness. While the explored themes of isolation, loneliness and death are heavy, the electric tone of the prose persistently enthralls. Here is Lyons’ energy and command of voice revealed by Blue-J, the protagonist of “He Sure Do Want to Fly,” describing a The Rancho, a rehab facility:
THE MISEDUCATION OF THE POET:
High School and the Fear of Poetry
by J.G. McClure
When I was an undergraduate taking one of my first poetry workshops, my poet-professor joked that “high school is where poetry goes to die.” I chuckled, thinking he was simply making fun of the melodramatic effusions of teenage writers.
I’ve since come to realize that what he was getting at is a much more systemic problem: that the way we’re taught about poetry in high school (the last time that many people will likely ever read a poem) bleeds the living energy from poetry and teaches students that the art is nothing but the dusty stuff of a museum of antiquities.
I’ve since come to realize that what he was getting at is a much more systemic problem: that the way we’re taught about poetry in high school (the last time that many people will likely ever read a poem) bleeds the living energy from poetry and teaches students that the art is nothing but the dusty stuff of a museum of antiquities.
ORPHANS
by Hadrien Laroche
translated by Jan Steyn and Caite Dolan-Leach
Dalkey Archive Press, 130 pages
reviewed by Jamie Fisher
Orphans starts with an advisory warning from the translators. Orphan, they explain, has a slightly different meaning in French: orphelin describes not only a child who has lost her parents, but a child who has lost only one parent.
The explanation is necessary, but also somewhat inadequate. Looking back along our linguistic family tree, orphan shrinks and dilates to cover so much more. In Latin an orbus is “bereft”; in Old English ierfa, an “heir,” with close ties to “suffering” and “trouble”; in Old Church Slavonic, a rabu (think robot) is a “slave” or “servant.” When we work our way back to Proto-Indo-European, orbho means “bereft of father,” but also “deprived of free status.” Orphan begins to sound simultaneously like someone who has lost his parents and someone who is inescapably tied to them...
IN THE EVENT OF FULL DISCLOSURE
by Cynthia Atkins
CW Books, 95 pages
reviewed by Arya F. Jenkins
Questions about the past, memory and legacy interlink with everyday images that haunt the reader in Cynthia Atkins’s second volume of poetry, In the Event of Full Disclosure. Atkins’s poems arch into a tree extending way beyond herself, into family, society, and community, while inviting the reader to share in her concerns. If there is wholeness and power to be achieved, the poet seems to be saying, it is recognizing one’s humanness and interconnectedness...
BLOWIN’ IT
by Wintfred Huskey
The Head & The Hand Press, 355 pages
reviewed by Claire Rudy Foster
Although the motif of the try-hard hipster wore thin over a decade ago, it’s still being trotted out in popular films, cartoons, articles, and so forth. The accusation of hipster-ness, which is distinct from being “hip,” at least where I live, is a serious one.
Hipsters are characterized by a blissful ignorance that borders on denial. (Peter Pan was probably the original hipster.) A hipster appropriates the costumes of other characters and blends them, creating a deliberate pastiche of playful yet ironic cultural references....
ON THE ABOLITION OF ALL POLITICAL PARTIES
by Simone Weil, translated by Simon Leys
New York Reviews of Books, 71 pages
reviewed by Ana Schwartz
When Albert Camus heard that he had won the Nobel Prize in 1957, he ran and hid. Averse to the frenzy of the press, he sought refuge in the home of a friend. He landed at the apartment of the family of Simone Weil in Paris’s 6th Arrondissement. Another friend, Czeslaw Milosz, in an essay on Weil, recalls that home fondly. He notes the humble, ink-stain-covered kitchen table, and he recalls the generous hospitality of Mme. Weil, mother of the young philosopher. He all but represents the quality of morning light illuminating the desk at which the young Weil would do her thinking. He never directly states that by 1957, Weil had been dead for almost fifteen years....
TOTEMPOLE
by Sanford Friedman
NYRB, 419 pages
reviewed by Derek M. Brown
It is commonly held that the figure at the base of a totem pole is the least significant, but if we are to believe the young craftsman-cum-love interest of Sanford Freidman’s protagonist, Stephen Wolfe, this figure is the most vital, as it provides the final chapter to the structure’s story.
Originally published in 1965, Totempole was revered and reviled for its unbridled depiction of a bourgeoning homosexual at a time when such themes were limited to the context of a cautionary tale. Unless the protagonist arrived at a much deserved tragic end, such works were thought to encourage morally untenable behaviors and corrupt the reading public. This work, however, provided a beacon of hope for those who thought themselves condemned....
Bolaño: A BIOGRAPHY IN CONVERSATIONS
by Mónica Maristain
Melville House, 288 pages
reviewed by Ana Schwartz
“Companionable Fictions”
The first section of Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 describes a small but ardent group of academic literary critics who dedicate their lives to the work of an obscure German author, Benno von Archimboldi. Almost five hundred pages later, in the last section, “The Part About Archimboldi” Bolaño finally introduces the author. In between stretch many strange adventures, but most are not directly related to the work of the author. But neither, really, was the first part, “The Part About the Critics.” Instead, Bolaño narrates the friendships and rivalries of four dedicated readers. If not for the table of contents, the fictitious novelist would appear to be merely the occasion to build a story out of these otherwise unremarkable lives. Actually, for the characters, Archimboldi, who keeps evading their grasp, really does turn out to be an excuse for them all to sustain richer and more companionable lives....
PANIC IN A SUITCASE
by Yelena Akhtiorskaya
Riverhead Books, 307 pages
reviewed by Michelle Fost
Late in Yelena Akhtiorskaya’s debut novel, Panic in a Suitcase, a character recalls a classic tale “about the lady who goes to see the rabbi and complains that life is so terrible with her slob of a husband and the crying children in a tiny apartment with such neighbors you start to think it might be better to be homeless, and the rabbi advises the lady to get a goat…” In the version I remember, the rabbi continues recommending that the lady bring another animal, and then another, one at a time, into her very crowded house, until finally, when the family is suitably miserable, he recommends getting rid of all the animals. Back to where they started—the original crowded condition—suddenly feels luxuriously spacious, and the family can’t thank the rabbi enough.
THE WOMAN WHO BORROWED MEMORIES
by Tove Jansson
Trans. Tomas Teal, Silvester Mazzarella
NYRB Classics, 283 pages
reviewed by Jamie Fisher
Early on in a story in the new collection of Tove Jansson’s work, The Woman Who Borrowed Memories, a man named Stein takes over a celebrated newspaper strip. “Tell me something,” an older cartoonist asks him. “Are you one of those people who are prevented from doing Great Art because they draw comic strips?”
“Not at all,” Stein assures him.
“Good for you,” the man replies. “They’re insufferable. They're neither fish nor fowl and they can't stop talking about it.”
HOW WE CAME UPON THE COLONY
by Ross White
Unicorn Press, 24 pages
reviewed by J.G. McClure
Ross White’s first chapbook, How We Came Upon the Colony, transports us to a strange world where the contemporary and the ancient commingle, and where nothing is ever quite what we first expect. Take “Downturn,” which opens:
What’s gone remains gone. When the Library at Alexandria
burned, scroll lit scroll. Whole languages died there.
The Colossus at Rhodes, felled by earthquake,
was eventually disassembled under the orders of the caliph,
carted off by camel, and smelted like scrap....
...
Fiction by Darcey Steinke, reviewed by Devon McReynolds SISTER GOLDEN HAIR (Tin House Books) The epigraph to Sister Golden Hair cites a line from the Modern Lovers’ 1970s era song, “Hospital”: “I’ll seek out the things that must’ve been magic…
Nonfiction by Brian Turner, reviewed by Jamie Fisher MY LIFE AS A FOREIGN COUNTRY: A MEMOIR (W.W. Norton & Company) Just a few years into the Iraq invasion, I remember a certain amount of critical hand-wringing over the absence of…
Fiction by Choe In-Ho, translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton, reviewed by Claire Rudy Foster ANOTHER MAN’S CITY (Dalkey Archive, Library of Korean Literature) As I’m writing this, the rain is beginning. The spattering sounds of drops hitting the fat,…
Fiction by Julia Elliott, reviewed by Kim Steele THE WILDS (Tin House Books) Finishing Julia’s Elliott’s debut short story collection The Wilds felt like leaving a strange town: I’m relieved to be back in a world where I understand the…
A Graphic Novel with text by Paul Kupperberg et al, illustrations by Pat Kennedy, Paul Kennedy and Fernando Ruiz, reviewed by Natalie Pendergast THE DEATH OF ARCHIE: A LIFE CELEBRATED (Archie Comic Publications, Inc.) The Death of Archie: A Life…
CONQUISTADOR OF THE USELESS
by Joshua Isard
Cinco Puntos Press, 249 pages
reviewed by Jon Busch
Joshua Isard’s Conquistador of the Useless is a novel of vertices, exploring the terrain of transitions, where cultural ethos and personal identity evolve in phase. It is this vague middle ground, the no-man’s-land between good ol’ days and dreary futures, where our protagonist Nathan Wavelsky traverses in apathetic strides. The use of this structure manifests in an insightful and poignant exploration of meaning and meaninglessness in contemporary life. What does it mean to live outside the narrative arc?
The novel opens with Nathan and his wife Lisa moving out of the city of Philadelphia and into the suburbs. The move marks a return to the land of his childhood and the end of his rebellious twenties. But Nathan isn’t home in either world. He is neither young nor old, urban nor suburban. The era of his young adulthood has concluded and the shifting cultural tide presents him with the uncomfortable truth that all of his once grandiose, youthful angst has accomplished nothing—the experiences which once felt unique and infused with importance were, in fact, no more than the standard benchmarks of growth that all young people pass.
AUGUSTUS
by John Williams
NYRB Books, 305 pages
reviewed by Ana Schwartz
“Notable Romans”
Those who studied Latin in high school or college might recognize the feeling with which Georg Lukacs introduces his Theory of the Novel. Although the book was published a century ago, it still holds valuable insight into the pleasures of reading. In the introductory sentences he describes those happy ages when the world and self were each visible with sharp distinction. Discrete they were, but also intimately familiar to each other. Lukacs’ framework is present in the first lists of Latin vocabulary; these collections of words alert contemporary readers to a world in which a word meant itself and at the same time more than itself. For example, ferro—iron—could denote the reliable metal; it could metonymically represent a sword made out of iron; and it could metaphorically represent any object of potentially harmful strength. These vocabulary lists imply a world in which such figures were useful, a world in which they could and would be deployed with practiced subtlety, perhaps in response to iron-willed violence.
Fiction by Kathryn Davis, reviewed by Claire Rudy Foster DUPLEX (Graywolf Press) “It is not wise to break the rules until you know how to observe them,” said T.S. Eliot. Author Kathryn Davis has taken the aphorism to heart.In her…
Fiction by Antal Szerb, translated by Len Rix, reviewed by Nathaniel Popkin JOURNEY BY MOONLIGHT (New York Review Books) I don’t mind observing that as a child I reveled in erotic games, secret afternoons and evenings of play at sex…
Poetry by Anthony McCann, reviewed by Matthew Girolami THING MUSIC (Wave Books) Anthony McCann’s newest collection, Thing Music, is not unlike a player piano, only instead of standards it plays John Cage or even Merzbow. That is to say, that…
Fiction by Milena Michiko Flašar, translated by Sheila Dickie, reviewed by Nathaniel Popkin I CALLED HIM NECKTIE (New Vessel Press) A novel can fly across time and space or it can burrow, it can seek out, hide from itself, emerge…
Poetry by Martha Baillie, reviewed by Jamie Fisher THE SEARCH FOR HEINRICH SCHLÖGEL (Tin House Books) “ERRATICA” Think fast! ____’s fourth novel navigates the tension between fact and fiction, readership and voyeurism, the impersonality of the archive, and the personal…
Fiction by Bohumil Hrabal, translated by Stacey Knecht, reviewed by Michelle E. Crouch HARLEQUIN’S MILLIONS (Archipelago Books) and Fiction by Marjana Gaponenko, translated by Arabella Spencer, reviewed by Michelle E. Crouch WHO IS MARTHA? (New Vessel Press) We had grown…
Poetry by Lissa Kiernan, reviewed by Carlo Matos TWO FAINT LINES IN THE VIOLET (Negative Capability Press) Lissa Kiernan’s debut collection radiates, burns, and fluoresces like uranium glass, like a “bed of plutonium nightlights.” Many of the poems, especially in the…
Fiction by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated from the French by Melanie Mauthner, reviewed by Nathaniel Popkin OUR LADY OF THE NILE (Archipelago Books) This is how Scholastique Mukasonga’s Our Lady of the Nile ends, in 1979: You remember what they used…
Poetry by Marybeth Rua-Larsen, reviewed by Shinelle Espaillat NOTHING IN BETWEEN (Barefoot Muse Press) Fairy tales often have at least two versions: the Disney translations, in which everyone signs and good guys have perfect teeth, and the Grimm incarnations, which…
Brian CliftonOFFICE SUPPLIES In the back, a Formica table waits on off-white industrial tile. We clock- out, pull paperclips from our throats: purple ones, yellow ones, metallic, pink. Our mouths never seem satisfied. We cough them up enough in jagged…
Robert PulwerTHE CONVERSATION “Are you an anti-Semite?” I looked up from my mother’s crumbling copy of Journey to the End of the Night, which I had pilfered during my last visit home. I was so shocked to hear that someone…
Shannon SweetnamMACARONS We were in the Clotted Cow when we got the call. “I found four thermometers, but they’re all rectal,” Dad shouted over the phone. “Rectal?” I asked, as I licked buttercream frosting off my fingers. “What do you…
Chila WoychikWHAT THE CLOUDS BRING Five years ago, the eastern part of this state was submerged—a Midwestern Katrina. Waters from a snowy winter mixed with an especially rainy spring and ran down our rivers, the Mississippi, the Iowa, the Cedar,…
Anthony CuneoTHIRTEEN MUSINGS AROUND MY CREATIVE PROCESS [slideshow_deploy id=’12332′] I I’m a big fan of uncertainty. I wish to God that the Nazis had been less certain that Jews were vermin. Not knowing you’re doing it right is a good…
Alicia L. GleasonDEADBOLT I always end up back at the apartment on 12th street. We moved in on a dim Saturday morning. Remember how you found that kinked key in the cabinet beneath the sink? A key someone before us…
Tony TracyFEIGN & CUT Indian summer a shroud of humidity that hangs in the form of crystalline vapor over the striped field. Flaming sun falling backside, burning from a ridge of distant pine. Its ruby trajectory caught in a canvas…
Emily Steinberg: Introduction by Tahneer OksmanBROKEN EGGS: A Visual Narrative To read Emily Steinberg’s autobiographical visual narrative, Broken Eggs, a set of sixty-seven images accompanied by sprawling text and recounting her struggles with infertility, is to witness a series of concurrent, sometimes…
You are so far south I keep
looking down at my thumb.
Written on the wrinkled skin
just below the joint
the neon blue veins fan out
flashing the name Utopia.
...read more
Caleb MurrayMETEMPSYCHOSIS John Henry made circles with his bare feet on the carpet. The overhead light was on a fader, which was set low and gave the room an almost hazy affect. Against one wall was a purple couch, its…
Luke StrombergWHEN I SLEEP, I DREAM OF TSUNAMIS I’m walking down Main Street when a blue and strangely beautiful tidal wave rises in the distance, reaching high over roof tops. It’s the sound of wind, of water gathering force that…
Kelly Ann JacobsonRAVEN IN THE GRASS A single blade of grass. Long and thin, streaked like the drag of paint left behind by a brush. A singular shade of green, like the color of nothing except itself. Among others it…
J. Scott BugherTHE BANK LET MY DAD GO I’m alone in a projector booth, dressed in denim and sweat, prying open tin canisters, reels of nitrate film. Tonight’s a double feature, and I’ve been left holding the bag again. Two…
Alli KatzCATS “If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.” —Mark Twain [slideshow_deploy id=’12378′] Mark Twain never met my cat. Five…
Glen ArmstrongTHE LEMON POEM He said “lemon” over and over. Lemon. Lemon. Lemon. Until the word was just a can of creamed lemon. The radio played a marathon of lemon songs. All over the city a million plastic boxes sang…
Kevin ToscaTHE INGREDIENTS OF DOG FOOD Each night my father dipped two fingers into meat and sauce and then passed that wet present down to Django’s drooling mouth. It was no secret. I saw. My mother saw. My father wasn’t…
Merilyn JacksonOYSTERS I am licking the insides of the oyster shells embedded in salt on a plate black as your angry eyes like your love, cooling rapidly as lava. Forgive me. It reminds me of how much I want to…
Jan-Erik AsplundEMILY Desire not the night, for that is when people will be destroyed. Or perhaps: to drag people away from their homes. Or maybe: when people vanish in their place. (Job 36:20), variations The speed was a natural solution…
Karla CorderoMIKEY COMES HOME When I was eight my father told me Mikey our pet turtle ran away from home. I dusted the aquarium for fingerprints. Made reward posters out of construction paper and outlined Mikey’s smile with jungle green…
Dan EncarnacionLENITIVE MAN: from “Hominids” (1) ..the quality or condition of being tortuous;….twistedness, ..crookedness, sinuosity; an instance of this — (2)…figuratively mental … .. .. … … or moral crookedness — (3)..an instance of this; or something……………. ……………that exemplifies it, a twisted…
Marc LabriolaCUTMAN If the needle swung from side to side, it would be a girl. If the needle swung in circles, a boy. Lailah’s three sisters lay her laughing in Ben’s arms as her mother dangled the needle above her…
