Commentary

Commentary |

on Promises of Gold, poems by José Olivarez

“Each poem enacts a mind that moves fluidly and fast, that can delight in play in the same moment it registers anger, or disappointment, or disdain, and that doesn’t need to take itself seriously to say something serious.”

Commentary |

on The Invention of the Darling, poems by Li Young Lee

“The collection enacts a return – a volta – from the isolationist and consumptive tendencies of the self and towards the omnific, agape love of the divine.”

Commentary |

on Phantom Pain Wings, poems by Kim Hyesoon

“Written after the death of Kim’s actual father, followed ‘three months and ten days later’ by her mother, Phantom Pain Wings delineates a terminal world where existence continues despite the absence of everything.”

Commentary |

on The Art of Dying: Writings 2019-2022 by Peter Schjeldahl

“Schjeldahl, for the benefit of his devoted audience, demystified both art and writing about art. ‘Each of us,’ he commented in 2004, after visiting a Vermeer exhibit, ‘is born with a capacity to see and feel intensely and with precision.'”

Commentary |

on Life on Earth, poems by Dorianne Laux

“Laux sees into yet unperceived life within our relationships with products, inventions, and pop culture, as well as the flexible boundaries we share with myth, poetry, and the unwitnessed aspects of our own lives.”

Commentary |

on My First Book, stories by Honor Levy

“She lays bare everything that is shameful, embarrassing, and frightening about Gen Z. This isn’t the generation of Greta Thunberg, Amanda Gorman, or Emma Gonzalez. This is the generation that profits off vanity, scrolls after sex, and thinks ‘cutting is healthier than Xanax.'”

Commentary |

on The Sorrow Apartments, poems by Andrea Cohen

“… varying her tone between heartbreaking and humorous, the words of each line a whiplash against what follows, often pitted against the speed of technology, text, and error in the world of the 21st century …”

Commentary |

on The Uptown Local: Joy, Death and Joan Didion, a memoir by Cory Leadbeater

“The book is reserved when it comes to details about Didion’s life, and he shares even less about her as a writer — Leadbeater assumes we know much of that. But he has a lot to say about class, keeping up appearances, and how grinding those divisions can be.”