Review: THE GYPSY MOTH SUMMER by Julia Fierro
There are many hard edges here—a pervading sense of doom hovers throughout—but my favorite moments are when we get to see the softer, more interior side of these characters.
Book Reviews
Confession, Communion: Three Poetry Chapbooks & Religion
This month, I read work concerning religion in one way or another, though the chapbooks here are not dominated by or entrenched in it as a theme. Instead these three writers use religion and spirituality as a lens through which readers can view many aspects of their poetry.
Review: THE RULES DO NOT APPLY by Ariel Levy
A staff writer for The New Yorker, Ariel Levy describes her beat as “women who are too much.
Review: FAIL BETTER by Beyza Ozer
Fail Better is expansive, moving across great distances to share with readers wholly intimate moments, but it is not a book that could be called timeless. Two poems in particular, “When I Kiss You, A Casket Opens” and “I’ve Watched Myself Die Twice This Week,” compel readers to reckon with specific events, the first one providing a time-stamp: June 12, 2016.
Review: AN ARRANGEMENT OF SKIN by Anna Journey
For Anna Journey, it starts at the University of Houston, during the last year of her PhD program. Away in Richmond, Virginia, for a literary conference arranged by a close friend and mentor, Journey begins the affair that will end her seven-year relationship.
Review: SCRATCH: WRITERS, MONEY, AND THE ART OF MAKING A LIVING edited by Manjula Martin
Scratch, a collection of interviews and essays from writers spanning the gamut of genre, commercial success, race, gender, and class, boasts pieces from Alexander Chee, Roxane Gay, Yiyun Li, Porochista Khakpour, and Jonathan Franzen. Topics range from the gritty details of checks and debts to a philosophical pondering of money, art, livelihood, and lifestyle.
I Forgot to Remember to Forget: Three Poetry Chapbook Reviews
For National Poetry Month this year, I read three poetry chapbooks that revolve around memory. Childhood memory, historical memory, the body’s learned memory, how place or sound or smell or language or popular culture evokes memory—the chapbooks here all touch on one or more or many of these themes.
Review: THE STRANGER IN THE WOODS: THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF THE LAST TRUE HERMIT by Michael Finkel
In 1986, at the age of twenty, without saying goodbye to anybody (and ignoring the Tao’s declaration that, “the truly kind leave no one”), Knight entered the woods of central Maine and never looked back.
This Spring’s Best Books
This spring, let your mind and heart wander where your feet might not take you—to far-off lands, to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and to the whiskey-making mountains of Appalachia—without ever leaving your bedroom. Here are our favorite picks for this season’s latest reads.