Of Hebrews and Haints: A Review of Sheree Renée Thomas’ Nine Bar Blues
byOne of the true glories of a well-executed short story collection is for the whole to greatly exceed the sum of its parts: Nine…
Reviews
Haunting Work: A Review of Diana Khoi Nguyen’s Ghost Of
byI finished reading Ghost Of when my grandmother first entered into hospice care. I was searching for a particular grammar of grief—one that knows…
The Softness of Ecology is Conversing with the Chaos of the World
byThe first poem in Kathmandu, “When Rajiv was blown up,” opens: Before her belly would caressand press the bomb in her sari,she gave the…
These Are Our Headwaters: A Review of Michael Garrigan’s Robbing the Pillars
byWe often talk about books being shaped by the times in which they were written, but books are also shaped by the times in…
The Me of Happiness: A Review of The High Shelf by Nadia Colburn
byIn her debut collection The High Shelf, Nadia Colburn has gifted us with intimate and elegantly crafted poems. Colburn draws from her experiences of…
Back to the Water: A Review of Bill Carty’s Huge Cloudy
byStart with the water. At the end of A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean writes: “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a…
Endless Senseless Endeavor: a Review of Brenda Shaughnessy’s The Octopus Museum
byBrenda Shaughnessy, in her fifth published book, The Octopus Museum, has built a literary edifice concerned with the memorialization of a unique species that…
Thinking in Circles
byReading the new selected poems of Wanda Coleman, Wicked Enchantment (Black Sparrow Press, 2020), at the same time as Kristi Carter’s new collection Aria…
Naming as Failure and Prayer
byI imagine the Adam of Genesis 1 stirring to consciousness, birthed by the words “let us make…,” then whisked into the garden whenever we…
The Fables Keep Failing: A review of Jonathan Andrew Pérez’s Cartographer of Crumpled Maps: The Justice Elegies
byThe elegy and eulogy, both as poetic form and social practice, fascinate me. While the poetic form of elegy orients itself in celebration and…