The High-Low Collapse in Dana Ward’s The Crisis of Infinite Worlds
Dana Ward’s collection is the very picture of postmodern poetry: compulsively self-conscious and concerned with the act of writing as much as with the subject of his writing.
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The Book Review in Review
The ethics of reviewing poetry have recently reemerged as a hot-button issue in the literary community. Many writers have discussed the efficacy and aims of the “negative” review—how and if it impacts poetry and its readership in general.
Man on Trial
In David Grossman’s award-winning novel A Horse Walks into a Bar, the narrator, a retired judge, describes one night in the life of the protagonist, Dovaleh, a stand-up comedian in his late fifties and his lost childhood friend.
Laurie Colwin and the Power of Domesticity
In Laurie Colwin’s short story “The Lone Pilgrim,” the unnamed narrator describes her longing for the domestic lives of others: “Oh, domesticity! The wonder of dinner plates and cream pitchers…We domestic sensualists live in a state of longing, no matter how comfortable your own places are.” What the narrator desires more than the jelly molds…
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Accused of a crime he didn’t commit, Roy is sent to prison after he and his wife Celestial have been married for less than two years.
Abiding Cruelty in Marianne Fritz’s The Weight of Things
Translated from German into English in 2015, Austrian author Marianne Fritz’s The Weight of Things presents domesticity and motherhood as intolerable, even unbearable, in the aftermath of the Second World War.
The Incantatory Effect of Repetition in Memoir
Roxane Gay’s Hunger and Melissa Febos’s Abandon Me both deal with longing to be understood and fighting the instinct to try to disappear. Both also use repetition as a literary device to achieve a lyricism, rhythm, and resonance that build power.
Lady Bird and the Art of the In-Between
Lady Bird tells a categorically un-special story. But as a coming-of-age narrative, the film is tasked with charting a course through that fearful space where childhood meets adulthood, or in this case, where girlhood meets womanhood.
Disappointment City: Roberto Arlt’s 1930 Trip to Rio de Janeiro
When I moved to Rio de Janeiro and read Arlt for the first time, I began to grasp that the distance between expectation and reality, between hope and disappointment, animates and haunts the experience of the outsider to a foreign country.