Book Review

rev. of The Way Out by Lisa Sewell

The Way Out Poems by Lisa Sewell. Alice James Books, $9.95 paper. Reviewed by David Daniel. Lisa Sewell’s first collection of poems, The Way Out, explores territory that’s not fit for the timid; whether she’s writing about the body’s generation or its decay, or of love, or sex, or of abortions, she does so with…

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rev. of The Open Boat: Poems from Asian America ed. by Garrett Hongo

The Open Boat: Poems from Asian America An anthology edited by Garrett Hongo. Anchor Books, $12.00 paper. Reviewed by Stewart David Ikeda. In this time of multicultural vogue, Garrett Hongo’s extraordinary poetry anthology, The Open Boat: Poems from Asian America, makes an intelligent statement about the limitations of limits, the perils of essentialism, and…

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rev. of The World Book by Steven Cramer

The World Book Poems by Steven Cramer. Copper Beech Press, $9.95 paper. Reviewed by H. L. Hix. “Sentimentality,” Wallace Stevens said, “is a failure of feeling.” The poems in Steven Cramer’s courageous and powerful second collection, The World Book, risk that failure: they address themes susceptible to sentiment, such as the narrator’s adolescence, the deaths…

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rev. of The Paper Anniversary by Joan Wickersham

The Paper Anniversary A novel by Joan Wickersham. Viking, $21.00 cloth. Reviewed by Katherine Min. In her first novel, The Paper Anniversary, Joan Wickersham writes beautifully and with excruciating honesty about marriage, the sublime and the mundane of conjugal affection, and conjugal brutality. One of the astonishments of the book is the way both partners,…

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rev. of These People by Lloyd Schwartz

What a disconcerting book of poems Lloyd Schwartz has written! If Hell, as Hegel said, is Other People, then Schwartz does not even allow us the comfort of such infernal alienation — These People are among us, the poet himself right on the line, and the sad, the mad, and the had constitute an astonishing…

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rev. of The Pleasing Hour by Lily King

The Pleasing Hour A novel by Lily King. Grove/Atlantic Monthly Press, $23.00 cloth. Reviewed by Jessica Treadway. This may be the first time you hear of Lily King, but her debut novel, The Pleasing Hour, assures that it won’t be the last. With an acute sensibility tuned to the finest details of character, place, and…

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rev. of Tipping Point by Fred Marchant

Tipping Point Poems by Fred Marchant. The Word Works, $10.00 paper. Reviewed by Sam Cornish. Fred Marchant’s first collection of poetry is autobiographical, yet intellectual and poetic enough to avoid the clichés of confessional poetry. There is honest emotion when he writes of his father abusing his mother, or of the same man dying of…

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rev. of The Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones

The Pugilist at Rest Stories by Thom Jones. Little, Brown and Company, $18.95 cloth. Reviewed by Kevin Miller. Already commercially successful, with half the entries previously in The New Yorker, Harper’s, and Esquire, Thom Jones’s debut collection is best described as utterly uncompromising. From his gallery of hard-assed, hard-headed, hard-luck, or simply hard cases, to…

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rev. of To Put the Mouth To by Judith Hall

To Put the Mouth To Poems by Judith Hall. Quill/William Morrow, $8.00 paper. Reviewed by Diann Blakely Shoaf. “To put the mouth to” is an old definition of adorare, and the phrase gives Judith Hall a memorable title while also providing a ground-bass for this musical and voluptuously intelligent first collection. “Love / Is difficult…

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